


Special Unit 3

by Soledad



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Special Unit 2, Torchwood
Genre: Body Swap, Don't prod alien artefacts if you haven't got a clue, F/M, M/M, Only at Torchwood can two guys have a het relationship - Freeform, Time Lords have sentient hair, Tosh is the best companion, gender swap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-30
Updated: 2016-07-30
Packaged: 2018-07-28 05:54:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 26,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7627675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Soledad/pseuds/Soledad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once again, Gwen fumbles around with something she was told not to touch. The consequences are…unusual. Heavy-duty Gwen bashing and a great deal of silliness. Suitable for all, with the exception of die-hard Gwackers. Crackfic with gender bending, body swap, whatever – the whole nine miles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> The alien artefacts described here have been borrowed from the “All Systems University” website. Since they were never actually used in “Andromeda” but look really cool, I thought it would be a waste to let them sink into obscurity. Besides, we so rarely get to see the alien gizmos Torchwood apparently deals with on a regular basis. You can view them on the website by clicking at the artefact numbers embedded in Ianto’s little notes.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
 **PART ONE: THE BEGINNING**

The beginning is usually a delicate matter. Especially when one looks back at a recent series of fairly traumatic events and tries to figure out in hindsight where – and how – it has all begun. It can be a really hard case of mental acrobatics sometimes, and the efforts, sadly, often remain unsuccessful.

In this particular case, however, nobody could have had the slightest doubt about the beginning. Things had, as so often before, started with Gwen. With Gwen-bloody-Cooper, who always thought she knew everything better and never listened when told not to fool around with unknown alien tech as long as it wasn’t declared safe by Jack or Tosh – the two people with actual technical knowledge at Torchwood Three.

The Rift had been quiet for weeks, Weevil activity had been minimal, and they were all bored out of their heads. Well, Tosh was working on her updated translation programme (the one Gwen and Owen had managed to destroy almost a year earlier, by kicking the plug of her computer out of its socket), and Ianto was, as usual, slaving down in the Archives. 

Jack had decided to use the Rift downtime for examining and cataloguing about a dozen alien artefacts that had either been sent in for just that reason or had been lying around untouched for quite some time. Which meant that Ianto would be busier than ever for the next week or so, as such tasks naturally fell to him… among other, more menial tasks, that is. He worked more than all the others counted together, with the exception of Tosh, and nobody seemed to take notice of that fact.

But the others _were_ bored. Owen distracted himself by playing computer games, and Jack was chatting with the leader of Torchwood Two (which he only did on days of extreme boredom, as Archie McAllister really wasn’t the kind of man he’d choose to socialize with). Much to Gwen’s chagrin, who took offence on the two males of her interest (as Ianto didn’t count, being just the teaboy) paying her presence and her obvious need to be entertained no attention.

She’d become so bored that she eventually stalked into the empty storage room to take a closer look at the alien junk Jack had out in there for Ianto to take them into the Archives. Ianto had already been there, apparently, and did a bit of pre-cataloguing, as there were post-it notes glued to the various artefacts with his elegant cursive script – the one he only used for the Archives. There were quite a few of them, waiting to be properly stored.

Not having anything better to do (well, she _would_ have a depressingly huge pile of documents to file, but that was even more boring than doing nothing), Gwen began to poke around the artefacts, reading the labels. Out of curiosity, mostly, as the place names and references didn’t really tell her a thing. Studying older cases was a boring activity, so she’d never bothered to look up things Torchwood might already have encountered.

The first artefact looked like a vertical metal ring fastened to a small, marble-like socket. A bent blue and silver blade was swirling in its centre, and sometimes blue lights washed over its entire surface.

_**[Artefact #1](http://saveandromeda.com/allsystems/artifacts/artifact1.htm)**_ , stood on the post-it note with Ianto’s handwriting. _Confiscated from an Alzarian who fell through the Rift in 1977. Supposedly a tool used by the Alzarians for shaping and molding their hive cities. Data needs further confirmation. Possible information source: the Doctor._

Her curiosity piqued, Gwen poked the reddish sensor field in the middle of the whirling blade… and jumped back, startled, as the ring suddenly began to shrink. It shrunk to the third of its original size; then it sprouted three metallic arms, with a bent blade at the end of each. After waves of blue-white energy coming in widening rings from the centre of the artefact, other metal rings appeared in the bend where arms and blades met. They were slowly pulsating with a blue light.

For a moment, Gwen stood, petrified with fear. The... thing reminded her uncomfortably of the cyber-conversion unit where her life had nearly ended a year perviously. But when she saw that nothing worse was happening, she ignored the artefact and stepped over to the second one… which didn’t have a very spectacular look. It was simply a metallic arc, with a pendant attached to its highest point. It was slowly swaying back and forth without any visible aid.

_**[Artefact #2](http://saveandromeda.com/allsystems/artifacts/artifact2.htm)**_ , Ianto’s label said. _A loan from TW2, requiring further investigation. Possibly of Chulan origins. Nothing extraordinary to notice, save from its unique charm._

Gwen shook her head, deciding once again that Ianto was a weird person. For her part, she didn’t find the artefact charming, even though the arrowhead of the pendant was beautifully made: like a wreath composed of folded silver and spread golden wings. Yet it didn’t do _anything_ aside from swaying back and forth – how boring! Gwen turned her back to it and continued her search for something more exciting.

The third artefact looked like some large soup tureen, made of two different materials: red-veined black stone the centrepiece and blue metal the rim, shaped like butterfly wings. There was also a small, funnel-shaped piece, made of some translucent material, set in the very middle of the centrepiece, containing a pulsing red and purple light. There were flashes of red washing over the surface occasionally.

_**[Artefact #3](http://saveandromeda.com/allsystems/artifacts/artifact3.htm)**_ , Ianto’s note stated. _Handed over by UNIT for archiving, as its actual purpose could not be determined. The only known thing about it is its tolerance to extreme temperatures. The forcefield it develops when activated serves no visible purpose._

Forcefield? Activated? Now _this_ sounded more like it. But how did one activate an alien artefact? Gwen reached out tentatively to the funnel in the centre. The light flashes quickened at once, and the thing suddenly sprouted metallic arms, not unlike those of the first gizmo, just without the blades. A bluish forcefield began to glow in the clutches of the arms, giving the… the thing the looks of a much larger vessel, now shaped like a calyx.

“That’s all it does?” Gwen asked, disappointed, but received no answer. The only people who could have answered – namely Jack or Tosh, or possibly Ianto who seemed to know a surprising amount of things – were _working_ … unlike her. She shook her head in annoyance and continued her quest of discovery in the world of crappy alien tech.

The fourth artefact was simply a circular vessel made of some white metal, set on a small socket. It had four bent, blade-like arms, the middle of which seemed to be made of blue glass. It was rather pretty, actually; it reminded Gwen of some futuristic room fountain. She leaned down to read the label with interest.

_**[Artefact #4](http://saveandromeda.com/allsystems/artifacts/artifact4.htm)** has been salvaged by Torchwood Three from a crashed Draconian spaceship in 1973. It’s presumably a holoprojector used in stellar cartography, as it projects the holographic images of stellar bodies when activated._

Gwen figured out easily enough how to activate the thing – it seemed to react to humanoid brainwaves – and played with it for a while. But after ten minutes or so, she got bored with it and went on to **[the next piece](http://saveandromeda.com/allsystems/artifacts/artifact5.htm)**.

That one was really disappointing – just the open-mawed skill of some unknown animal in a jar filled with blue liquid. It blubbered loudly when she passed, blue light flashing over the jar from the inside, and the skull seemed to jump up and down a few times. Gwen shuddered; it remained her too much of that stupid hand in a jar that Jack kept in his office. What was it with people keeping severed body parts on their desks? It was disgusting, really.

The sixth artefact was a translucent turquoise sphere with a silver antenna on top, resting on folded metallic legs. As Gwen approached it, the legs slowly unfolded, lifting the sphere to eye level, and it began to emanate a soft, pulsing turquoise light – and that was it.

_**[Artefact #6](http://saveandromeda.com/allsystems/artifacts/artifact6.htm)**_ , the label said, _was found by the NASA Space Shuttle amidst a lot of space junk. Possibly a signal beacon of Hoix origins, or so Jack says._

“Yeah, and a bloody boring and useless one at that!” Gwen groused. It was _so_ annoying! So many interesting-looking alien gizmos, and neither of them were capable of doing _anything_ at all! 

And speaking of which – what the hell was a Hoix? Did Ianto really need to show off his knowledge of alien gizmos? What for? It wasn’t as if anyone would ever read his stupid notes, and if he wanted to impress Jack… well, Jack wouldn’t fall for that old trick, would he?

**[The seventh artefact](http://saveandromeda.com/allsystems/artifacts/artifact7.htm)** looked like a hamburger – like two halves of a brown football, actually, (the round kind used by soccer) with a translucent sphere pulsating emerald light sandwiched between them. As Gwen passed by, the sphere began to spin, but it stopped as soon as she got four steps or so away from it.

“Probably has proximity sensors, the stupid disco globe,” she muttered angrily. She didn’t even bother to read the post-it note.

The eight artefact seemed to be a small, round metallic door with several differently-shaped segments. When Gwen stepped in front of it, the middle segment seemed to melt away, somehow, revealing a glowing, pulsing red light.

_**[Artefact #8](http://saveandromeda.com/allsystems/artifacts/artifact8.htm)** , salvaged from the ruins of Torchwood One_, Ianto’s little note informed her. _Probably a medical scanner of some sort, but its working has never been confirmed._

Medical scanner… ewww! That was Owen’s field of interest, not hers. She dismissed the thing and stepped up to the next one.

Now _this_ was a strange piece of junk: like two purple umbrellas joined by the ends of their handles and four silver globes floating seemingly in thin air at its middle. As Gwen approached, the globes began to spin around the central column, exchanging sparks of silver-blue energy with it.

_**[Artefact #9](http://saveandromeda.com/allsystems/artifacts/artifact9.htm)** seems to be some sort of generator_ , Ianto’s note said, _although it’s unknown where the generated energy actually goes, as it doesn’t seem to be stored in the globes._

“A generator, pah!” Gwen was very disappointed. At first, the thing looked like those little _perpetuum mobile_ thingies she used to love so much as a child – she could sit and watch them spin for hours – but apparently, it was just some boring tech stuff.

The tenth artefact consisted of three concentrically lessening, wide metal rings around a central column, topped with a metallic half-sphere that was equipped with bent blades. What was it with all those whirling blades anyway? There was a fourth, much thinner ring below, of the same size as he largest one of the three. A red sensor blinked on top, and flashes of green-blue light bathed the rings regularly.

_**[Artefact #10](http://saveandromeda.com/allsystems/artifacts/artifact10.htm)** was identified by UNIT as a Crespallion comm device_ , Ianto’s note said. _Their scientists failed to determine the range and the means of communication, though. The only things it emanates are light waves._

And indeed, the thing suddenly rearranged the bladed upper piece, making it more… streamlined, somehow. The sensor emanated a red flash upwards, and a small, boomerang-shaped blade emerged on the top, whirling around like crazy. Then it stopped. Just like that.

“Bollocks!” Gwen swore under her breath. “Is all this stupid alien junk broken?”

“We don’t know,” Ianto’s calm, even voice replied as he came in with a big, empty carton, box, presumably to collect some of the artefacts. “Which is why you aren’t supposed to fool around with them.”

Gwen felt a flash of anger run through her. How did the teaboy _dare_ to lecture her like that?!

“ _You_ aren’t the one to tell me what to do and what to leave alone,” she replied with exaggerated sweetness.

Ianto nodded and, going to the first artefact, he deactivated it by simply touching the centrepiece again. The metallic arms withdrew and the central ring extended itself to its original size – then it went silent.

“You’re right,” he said, “I’m not. Those are _Jack’s_ orders, and – in case it has escaped your attention – _he_ is the boss here. He told us that nobody but Tosh is to touch these things in his absence, and that’s what we’re gonna do.” He gave her one of those bland smiles reserved for idiots who made his life hell in the tourist information office – which only enraged Gwen more.

“I don’t understand why Tosh should get special treatment,” she groused. “I mean, okay, she’s our computer nerd, but other than that, I’m every bit as qualified to check out alien space junk as she is.”

“Are you?” Ianto asked with fake surprise. “Do you have a master’s degree in electrical engineering and a doctorate in computer sciences? Or a BA in comparative linguistics? Have you already worked on the government’s secret science projects at the age of twenty? Cos if you haven’t, you better leave these things alone. It will be safer for us all.”

Gwen felt as if someone had slapped her – which, in a sense, Ianto had. The teaboy had become quite belligerent since Jack’s return… as if _he_ ’d been the reason Jack had come back. That little, delusional fool! Well, he’ll learn his place, eventually.

The so dismissed archivist had, in the meantime, set the carton box down and was now trying to stuff as many artefacts into it as humanly possible. He held up the jar with the canine skull for a moment, and it blubbered happily at him, as if in greeting.

“I think I’ll ask Jack if I can keep this one in my office,” he said. “It’s rather cute… kinda like having a dog, actually.”

“You’re disgusting, both of you,” Gwen said, pulling an _ewww!_ face. “Jack and you both seem to have some sick fetish about keeping body parts in jars. I mean, who in their right minds does something like that?”

“There are worse hobbies,” Ianto replied with a shrug and lifted the carton box, groaning softly from the weight of it. “By the way, Andy is looking for you. He’s in the tourist office, pounding on the counter and calling your name every ten seconds or so.”

Gwen rolled her eyes. She didn’t mind Andy following her like a lovesick puppy on good days, but this one was definitely not one of those days.

“I don’t have the nerve to deal with him right now,” she said. “Can’t you send him away somehow?”

“I could,” Ianto answered slowly. “The problem is, though: he shouldn’t even realize he could look for you in the tourist office. How comes he knows about that?”

Gwen shrugged. “He’s a cop. Perhaps he followed me. That’s how _I’ve_ found you in the first place, wasn’t it?”

“You’ve found us because Jack messed up the dosage of the Retcon,” Ianto commented dryly. “Those were extraordinary circumstances. Andy is a different matter. What if he finds out more than he’s supposed to?”

“Then we’ll Retcon him, too,” Gwen answered promptly.

“We already have,” Ianto reminded her. “Repeatedly, as you keep revealing things to him you aren’t supposed to. And we know how dangerous it could be if you Retcon someone again and again. He could develop immunity against the amnesia pill – or it could eat away his brain completely. Is that what you’re planning for him? I thought you were mates. Best friends.”

Gwen rolled her eyes. “Ianto, love, you’re really boring me. And I’m bored enough already as it is.”

“Well, then perhaps you should give actual work a try,” Ianto retorted in a somewhat aggressive manner. It was uncharacteristic for him, but he was thoroughly fed up with her. “ _After_ you’ve dealt with Andy. That’s one mess I’m _not_ willing to clean up after you.”

With that parting shot, he left, leaving a speechless Gwen behind. She was outraged by his cheek – how did he _dare_?! A serious discussion with Jack about his teaboy and part-time shag was definitely in order. Ianto shouldn’t believe he can do anything, just because he put it up for the boss.

But first, she had to deal with Andy. What was the stupid boy _thinking_ , coming here and making a spectacle of himself? It was time she gave _him_ a piece of her mind, too.

On her way out, she involuntarily stopped in front of the arc with the still swaying pendant. While she still couldn’t see any _charm_ in it, she had to admit that it had a certain… hypnotic effect on her, especially if she watched it a little longer. She wondered whether it would stop if she touched the pendant…

She reached out, slowly, carefully, touching the empty space encircled by the closed silver and spread golden wings. It took her several attempts to do so, as matching the rhythm wasn’t exactly her forte, but in the end, she scored a hit.

The pendant stopped indeed. In the next moment, the arc began to sprout further metallic limbs – they seemed to be a standard with alien junk – until the whole thing rearranged itself into a mushroom-like shape, sporting a domed upper piece that got filled with blue energy. The gently arched “stem” began to glow in a deep golden light, visible through the transparent cartouches adorning it. The pendant itself ended up on top of the whole structure, sending out periodical blue light flashes as the energy inside the artefact was building up gradually…

… and that was when the pain hit. It felt as if some giant had taken her like a handful of clay, kneading and reshaping her at its pleasure. She could feel her flesh melt and her bones crack – until she finally, mercifully lost consciousness.


	2. Rude Awakenings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You are free to guess what has happened to our heroes – although it will all be revealed in the next part. *g*

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
**PART TWO: RUDE AWAKENINGS**

Jack Harkness came to in his office with a heartfelt groan. Every single bone in his body hurt; and he had the feeling that even his bruises had bruises. That answered _one_ question, though: he most definitely had _not_ died in this particular case… whatever it might have been. Had he died, he’d be weak and disoriented for a few minutes, but he wouldn’t _hurt_ after that. And he _was_ hurting like hell right now – although he couldn’t, for the immortal life of his, explain why. He had absolutely no memory of what had happened to him.

Deciding that if anyone, Ianto would be able to give him an answer – after all, didn’t he always know _everything_ that happened in the Hub, a hundred times better than Jack himself, who _lived_ there? – Jack touched his headset to activate it… and froze in shock. He couldn’t feel the contact on his fingertips. Hell, he couldn’t feel _anything_ with his hand!

Thinking that it might have gone numb by some sort of nerve damage, he carefully extended the hand… and froze again. The first thing he could see was the sleeve of a drab, dark suit jacket – which was ridiculous. He’d _never_ worn a suit in his unnaturally long life. Uniforms, yes, black leather, for sure, but never a suit. That was Ianto’s idea of proper clothing – and Ianto _did_ look good in them. Good enough to eat, in fact.

Sternly ordering his lewd thoughts into the back of his mind for later use, Jack gave his strangely nerveless hand a good, hard look… and got the third shock within five minutes. The appendage he was staring at was definitely an artificial one. A prosthetic hand, made by some unfamiliar technology.

It was also clearly black. What the hell had happened to him?

He held up his other hand, the real one. It was also dark-skinned, as dark as or even darker than Detective Swanson’s. Had he made a trip into the far future and been given transplants for some unknown reason?

Well, he decided, let’s deal with first things first. Using his other hand, he activated his headset.

“Ianto? Come to my office, we’re having a problem.”

Hearing his own voice, he froze again. It sounded deep and harsh… completely unfamiliar to him.

What the hell had happened here?

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
Jack’s call reached Ianto in the depth of the Archives, where he was about to put the alien artefacts previously collected into storage. He felt strangely disoriented and had absolutely no memory of what might have happened to him… and why he was lying on the cold concrete floor.

Not to mention the debiliating pain that was practically saturating every cell in his body. He hadn’t hurt so badly since his encounter with the cannibals in the Brecon Beacons, about a year earlier. But he hadn’t even left the Hub, had he? The artefacts were still in the box where he’d put them… how long ago exactly?

He reached into his pocket for the stopwatch to check the time – and his hand touched well-worn denim instead of the usual coarse wool of his suit trousers. And the stopwatch was gone.

What the hell…?

Or had he accidentally put it into one of his suit jacket pockets? Still a little dizzy, he patted down his jacket – and froze with shock as he realized that he wasn’t wearing a jacket at all. Or a vest. Or one of his trademark dress shirts and ties, either.

Instead, he was wearing a tank top, made of some way too clingy and elastic fabric. A tank top that was short enough to reveal his navel.

Plus, he seemed to have grown a pair of breasts since coming down to the Archives. How on Earth...?

He patted down his chest again, praying that he’d been hallucinating a moment earlier, but there could be no doubt: he had breasts now. Small, perky ones as usually slim, flat-chested women had them, but definitely breasts. Pushed up by a cleverly-made bra and boldly displayed through the generous cleavage of his tank top, at that.

He sat there for a moment, trying to recover from his shock. This was impossible. Gender-bending only happened in really cheesy sci-fi shows, never in reality. Not even in Torchwood reality, which, admittedly, was a rather unusual one, what with Jack’s perpetual deaths and resurrections, and the Doctor regenerating in a whole new shape (and personality) every time he got killed.

But even the Doctor came back as a male entity every time; and as for Jack, he just remained the same. Gender-swap was _not_ part of their repertoire.

Speaking of Jack… he was still calling for him through the headset. Ianto looked around for the thing. It was lying on the floor, not so far away from him; he’d most likely lost it when collapsing. He reached out for it, only to find that his arm was not long enough anymore to get it. Apparently, the breasts didn’t represent the only changes in his body structure.

He stared down at his hands. They were still shapely and long-fingered, but definitely female hands – and God forgave him, he was wearing nail polish now! A further look down himself revealed that he now possessed endless (and rather well-formed) legs, and that the denim he’d felt before was an _extremely_ short skirt, displaying said legs in the most complimenting manner.

His feet, too, were smaller and more narrow, and every hope that this new, female version of him would at least have the common sense to wear sensitive shoes fled when he saw the knee-high boots with their high heels. How was he supposed to climb the spiral staircases of the Hub in _those_ without breaking his neck? Really, the higher powers could have shown at least _some_ small mercies!

 _Although Jack probably would appreciate the sight_ , he though sourly.

That reminded him that he still hadn’t answered Jack’s call. Getting the headset, he put it on and activated it.

“Sorry, sir, I was out like a light for some time,” he began; then he stopped, shocked again by the feminine pitch of his voice. It was a low, husky voice for a woman, but definitely a feminine one. He _should_ have suspected it would change, too, really, after the breasts and hands and endless legs and all that, but… well, how could a man seriously _think_ about such things, without freaking out completely?

“Ianto?” Jack was shouting at him through the headset frantically. “Ianto, is that you? What happened to your voice? Are you all right?”

If he thought about it, Jack didn’t sound exactly like himself, either. Perhaps he wasn’t the only one affected by… well, whatever it was that happened.

Deepening his voice as much as he could without sounding like a vamp from some cheap porn movie, he interrupted Jack’s frantic questions.

“Sir… Jack, I don’t think we should discuss this per interlink. I’ll come up to your office as soon as I’ve checked with Tosh. Perhaps the CCTV footage can tell us what’s happened here.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
Falling asleep on her own desk had been a stupid thing to do, Tosh decided, while trying to work the worst kinks out of her neck and back. Even though she’d done so involuntarily. A quick glance at the computer screen reassured her that she hadn’t accidentally deleted the programme she’d been working on for so long. That was a relief – starting everything again from square one, for the third time, would have been a killer. It was bad enough that Gwen and Owen had ruined her entire work during one of their stupid little mating dances.

Suppressing her old pain about their affair – and their behaviour towards her, especially Owen’s, who actually _counted_ – she glanced at the screen one more time to see how long she’s slept. She was surprised to see that it had only been twenty-three minutes. She felt as if she’d spent days crunched over her desk in a most uncomfortable position. In fact, she felt as if she’d spent said days on one of those medieval torture benches where they’d stretched the unfortunate suspects to force a confession out of them, whether they were guilty or not. How could she have ruined her back so completely in a mere twenty-three minutes? She was not so old yet, for God’s sake!

Thinking of it, her back wasn’t the only thing that hurt. She hurt _everywhere_ , as if someone had beaten her up – which was ridiculous, wasn’t it? It couldn’t have happened in those twenty-three minutes, within which she didn’t even leave the Hub, could it? Unless there had been some freaky dimensional shift or whatnot, and she’d fought a war in a parallel dimension. Or took part in mud-wrestling. With Torchwood, one could never really know.

“This job is driving me crazy,” she told the universe in general – and froze in shock, hearing the geeky male voice coming from her mouth. What the hell…?

She jumped to her feet – and promptly hit her head in one of the vertical concrete beams that ran directly above her workstation. But how? She’d been working here for _years_ and never bumped against that dratted thing. It was weird – unless she’d grown at least a foot in the last twenty-three minutes.

Being the research girl that she was, she decided to seek affirmation, no matter what she might find. Everything was better than not knowing. With uncertain steps, trying to get in synch with the obviously changed proportions of her body, she went to the washroom – the only place within Torchwood with a proper, full-body mirror.

The image said mirror showed her was that of a lanky, dark-eyed Caucasian man, with a rather unattractive horse-face and short-cropped dark hair, wearing a white lab coat over grey trousers and a fairly tasteless T-shirt. He also had feet of the size of rowing boats.

Tosh collapsed on the floor, breaking down in tears. This was not fair! This was so not fair! As if being ignored by everyone wouldn’t have been bad enough, she was now an ugly male geek, too!

She didn’t know how long she sat there, sobbing, when she heard the clicking of high heels beyond her. Looking up, she saw a tall, gorgeous blonde woman, wearing knee-high boots, an extremely short denim skirt and a tank top that left nothing to imagination. A long coat in leopard-look completed the image of an aspiring movie star.

“T-tosh?” the woman asked uncertainly, and there was something achingly familiar in her husky voice.

“Ianto?” she asked tentatively, and the woman nodded in defeat.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
**~ game over ~ game over ~ game over ~ game over ~**

The sign blinked on Owen’s computer screen tirelessly. It was perhaps that stubborn flashing that woke him from his sleep… coma… unconsciousness… whatever. A bleary look at the screen told him that he’d lost the endgame, which was annoying enough, after such an excellent series of wins, but didn’t explain why he was feeling like shit.

Like after an entire night spent in seedy bars, actually, including indecent amounts of booze and getting beaten up by at least three jealous boyfriends whose girls he’d seduced. Which he hadn’t, not this time. He’d been hanging around in the Hub, bored to death, playing computer games against the boredom. Hadn’t he?

He shook his head in confusion – and was shocked by the long, honey-blonde tresses flying around his face. Had someone glued a blonde wig onto his head while he’d been out? He wouldn’t put such a silly, infantile joke beyond Gwen – it was definitely her crappy idea of fun.

Owen conveniently forgot the fact how often _he’d_ been part of Gwen’s juvenile pranks, in order to get into her pants easier. Not that it would ever have been such a complicated task. She was always ready (and willing), just like the bloody boy scouts. Or girl scouts. Whatever.

In any case, the stupid wig needed to be gone. He’d give Gwen a piece of his mind later. Privately. By pizza and beer, perhaps. At his own place.

Groaning with pain, Owen rose from his workstation – and fell promptly onto his arse. In that undignified position his knees came into view, and while they were clad in blue denim, as expected, something seemed… odd about them. They were a lot less knobbly than usual, and the jeans, too, were different. Fitted, of a much softer fabric than his usual gear… almost feminine. The legs within those jeans seamed longer and ended in narrow feet, which were put in nice little leather shoes with three-inch heels.

Which explained the falling onto his arse part, but not the rest of it. After all, he’d never in his life worn shoes with three-inch-heels. Ever. He wasn’t a fag. Okay, he sometimes did get close and personal with a guy, just for the change of scenery, but he wasn’t one of those neutered blokes who’d dress up like women, was he?

That reminded him of the stupid wig, and without any further attempt to get up, he began to tear at it with both hands, trying to get it off. To his unpleasant surprise, it hurt like a bitch – what sort of industrial strength glue had Gwen used? The stupid cow, couldn’t she even get her idiotic practical jokes right?

After several extremely painful moments of frantic tugging and tearing, the only result was a terribly burning scalp. The long blonde hair stayed firmly attached to where it had been, save from the handful that he’d managed to tear out… and boy, had _that_ hurt!

Actually, it had hurt a lot more than it ought to be when one was trying to remove a glued-on wig. Granted, he’d never had a wig glued on before, but this… this had felt as if he’d indeed torn out his hair for real. What if…

Nah, he refused that idea at once. Snipped it in the bud. Such things didn’t happen, not even at Torchwood. People didn’t grow long blonde hair in twenty minutes or so. Nope, it was just not possible. All he needed to do was to get to the CCTV monitoring station and check out what had happened tin the Hub while he was out. Yep, that’s what he’d do.

He clambered onto his feet, mindful of the stupid shoes Gwen must have managed to put on him somehow and meandered over to said station. The screen was blank; all he could see on it was his mirror image.

Or, to be more accurate, the image of a gently beautiful blonde woman, whose smooth forehead was creased into his customary frown.

Seeing that image, Dr. Owen Harper passed out a second time.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
Andy Davidson woke up in the tourist information office with the mother of all headaches… although his head wasn’t the only thing that hurt. He felt like on that day, more than a year and a half ago, when he and Gwen had been sent to break up a bar brawl. Gwen, of course, had screwed up, as usual, getting herself knocked out in the first minute, and Andy had suddenly found himself between the two hostile groups, both equally pissed off at the police for interfering.

He’d been sent on a week of sick leave afterwards, for his bruises to heal. And when he’d come back to work, Gwen had already been gone, without a word. Had joined Torchwood. Had been shown off her secret agent stuff ever since, all posh, as if she’d been his boss now.

No, Andy didn’t miss Gwen at all. He was all too happy to have a new, reliable partner who didn’t get him in trouble twice a week done to sheer stupidity and by constantly disobeying orders. But he’d promised Rhys, who was a decent bloke, to keep an eye on his wife-to-be – and God knew did she need surveillance! – and now there he was, in the bleak little tourist shop where he’d seen Gwen go in many times… but never come out.

Apparently, the shop was abandoned, so Andy switched into cop mode and started looking around for any clues for the whereabouts of the owners. And that was when he realised what had been bothered him ever since he’d come to.

He’d fallen asleep… passed out… whatever, in the tourist office. Where he woke up was a dry cleaner service – plus, his uniform was gone, too. What had those Torchwood types done with him? Kidnapped him? Shut him away amidst of a lot of recently cleaned coats? But how had they managed to do that, and, before all else, why?

He gave the room a thorough investigation but didn’t find anything suspect. For all means and purposes, it _was_ a dry cleaner’s… albeit a very small one. The only thing that puzzled him was a button, hidden below the counter. It didn’t look like a police alarm button, so what could it be?

Deciding that nothing dared nothing gained, Andy pressed the button.

In that instant, the front door of the shop fell shut, and simultaneously, part of the wall on the right opened up, revealing a hidden corridor behind. A secret door! Now that was more like it. Quickly, Andy jumped to the previously unseen door and slipped through before it could close, too.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
The blaring of the alarms lured Tosh and Ianto, both moving rather awkwardly in their new, unfamiliar bodies, out of the washroom. Moving around wasn’t an easy thing, even though Ianto solved part of the problem by pulling off the life-threatening boots and going barefoot. He’d fetch his extra shoes, the ones he kept in his locker for emergency cases, later.

“You’re ungrateful, really,” Tosh said, hating the sound of her new, geeky voice as she spoke. “Were I still a woman, I’d kill for a pair of boots like these; they’re gorgeous and must have cost a fortune.”

“You still _are_ a woman,” Ianto replied, his low, husky voice disturbingly sexy, even in his own ears. “You’re just stuck in a male body, that’s all.”

“And what an ugly one it is!” Tosh complained. “How comes that the changes turned you into a _femme fatale_ , while I get to be the nerd with no life again? An ugly, _male_ nerd at that? It’s not fair!”

“Let’s hope it’s only temporarily,” Ianto said. “I’ll happily give you the boots as a gift if I can get back my suits… and the proper body parts again.”

“Well, you’re a lucky dog in that you look gorgeous, both as a man _and_ as a woman,” a deep, unfamiliar voice said from the direction of Jack’s office.

Looking up, they spotted a large, middle-aged, portly black man, with his grey hair cropped so short he almost seemed bald. He had a thick moustache, too, and an apparently prosthetic hand. He was wearing a dark grey suit – not a particularly elegant one, but a suit nonetheless, which was impossible. Jack would _never_ …

“Jack?” Ianto asked tentatively, and the stranger nodded.

“In the flesh… although not in my own flesh, it seems. Do you have any idea what’s happened here?”

“Nope, Tosh and I were just about to check the CCTV when the alarm sounded.”

“So this is Tosh?” the not-quite-Jack shook his head in disbelief. “She isn’t even Japanese anymore!”

“Neither are you still white… nor even close to handsome,” Ianto pointed out mercilessly. Jack nodded.

“ _Touché_. At least I’m still a man. Although,” he added, giving Ianto’s new body a thorough once-over that would have been declared indecent in a dozen or so countries, “I do like the legs. And the tits. And your arse looks particularly gorgeous in that skin-tight mini skirt.”

“Careful, sir,” Ianto warned, “that’s harassment.

Even Tosh laughed at that overused phrase, the oldest insider joke of Torchwood. Everyone knew that Ianto didn’t mind being “harassed” by his boss the least. On the contrary.

“So,” Jack then said. “I’m here, you’re here, and Tosh is here. Where are the others? And who might want to visit us at this highly inconvenient time?”

“That would be PC Andy,” Ianto replied. “He was looking for Gwen in the tourist office when… well, when whatever this is happened.”

But when the cog door rolled aside, it wasn’t the lanky, uniformed, straw-headed figure of Andy that appeared. The man who’d come was about his age, but a head shorter, darkly handsome and wearing casual clothes. His brown hair was gelled up, and he had a five-hour shadow that made his face even more attractive.

“Why hello!” Jack whistled. “Not all the changes were for the worse, I see.”

Ianto shook his head in exasperation. “You’re hopeless, Jack. Can you control your libido until we find out what’s going on?”

“You’re no fun at all,” Jack pouted, which looked rather… strange on his new face, but let himself be shepherded into the main Hub area without further protests.


	3. So, What The Hell Happened To Us?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our heroes finally learn the ugly truth – and they are not happy. Also, you can finaly meet the new, "improved" Gwen... who isn't happy, either.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
 **PART THREE: SO, WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO US?**

While Tosh took a thoroughly confused Andy under her wings, promising him to explain everything later, Ianto made coffee – fortunately, the coffee machine remained unchanged, together with the rest of the Hub – and Jack went to look for Gwen and Owen. About five minutes later he came back, carrying a beautiful, long-haired blonde on his arm.

“I haven’t found any sign of Gwen, whatever she might look like at the moment,” he explained, “But I found this pretty creature in the morgue, at Owen’s computer, in the company of a lost game. So, I guess this must be Owen. Who’d have thought he could become such a hot girl?”

Ianto sat, crossing his endless legs in a manner that would have tempted a saint and glared at their boss. “Try to make a pass on him, and he’ll break your nose,” he warned. “And so will I, for that matter.”

“I never took you for the jealous type,” Jack said, grinning.

Ianto shrugged, bringing his newly-acquired breasts into the game. “I’m a girl now, Jack. I’m entitled to be a bit more… emotional.”

“We should all be a bit more _professional_ about this,” Tosh said. “Try to wake up Owen, guys; I’ll call up the CCTV footage of the last couple of hours.”

Waking up Owen was the easy part. Keeping him from fainting again and stopping his endless rants proved a lot harder.

“Well, at least we can be sure about _one_ thing,” Jack commented. “Whatever’s happened to us, it’s only changed the appearance, not the personality. As we can all see, nothing has changed in Owen’s sunny disposition.”

“Up yours, Harkness,” Owen scowled, the familiar sour expression looking so strangely out of place on his current lovely, female face. “Can we hope that Tosh will _finally_ move her lazy arse and find that footage, so that we can figure out this disaster and how to reverse it?”

“Mind your filthy mouth, Owen,” Tosh warned, without looking at him. “I’m twice your size now, and despite my looks, I’ll have no problem with hitting a girl if I have to.”

“We can have a chick fight to make time pass more quickly,” Ianto suggested with a bright smile. He, too, was half a head taller than Owen in this incarnation and found the thought of slapping the doctor silly a very appealing one. If there was one thing he had little tolerance for it was rudeness.

Poor Andy, still trying to come to terms with his different shape and looks, was staring at them in open-mouthed shock. How could they joke about… about this thing?

Tosh spun around with her chair and gave Ianto and Owen a disapproving look.

“Stop the hair-pulling, girls,” she said with a newborn confidence that surprised even her; perhaps no longer being the shortest person in the team _did_ help. “It’s TV-time.”

“Cool,” Jack rubbed his hands expectantly; then his face fell, realising he still couldn’t feel a thing with the prosthetic one. Still, he tried to save face. “Ianto, do we have popcorn?”

Ianto raised a superior eyebrow. “I find I have too much class in my current shape to play the teagirl to an elderly man, Captain my Captain,” he replied haughtily. “Besides, I don’t reckon the programme’s gonna be very… entertaining.”

“Okay,” Tosh said, ignoring them with practiced ease,” here we go. Let’s start with your office, Jack.”

The screen came alive, and they could see Jack talking to someone on the phone – presumably to Archie McAlister in Glasgow, as this had been his only phone call in that afternoon. After hanging up, he drank coffee and began to deal with the reports piling up on his desk. Some minutes later, however, he started convulsing with no visible reason, the outlines of his entire body becoming blurred and changing shape. In the end, the image cleared again, and the same large, middle-aged black man was sitting at the desk they had been introduced to a few minutes ago,

“That explains the _how_ ,” Ianto commented after a long moment of stunned silence, “But not the _why_.”

“Perhaps the rest of the records will help,” Jack suggested. “Show us the morgue, Tosh.”

But the footage from the morgue showed a scene almost similar to the first one. Owen was playing computer games – and winning, big time! – until the metamorphosis hit and he became the lovely blonde woman who was now sitting in their midst, with that unbecoming scowl on his/her gentle face. It was really a shame to ruin a face like that with such a sour look.

“Okay, what’s next?” Jack asked.

“The Archives don’t have CCTV surveillance,” Ianto replied, “So my suggestion would be either Tosh or the tourist office.”

“Ummm, guys,” Andy said, speaking for the first time. “I don’t know how to break this to you, but it ain’t a tourist office anymore.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Jack snorted. “What else could it be?”

“My impression was that of a dry cleaner's service,” Andy replied slowly.

Jack and Ianto exchanged baffled looks. This was the first indication that other than the persons inside the Hub might have changed.

“Show us the shop, Tosh,” Jack said grimly.

Tosh switched to live feed, and they all could see it without a doubt: that which once had been Torchwood’s cover shop was now a small dry cleaner’s, with the proper machines, cloth presses, hangers and all that stuff. There were even freshly cleaned coats and clothes hanging in the back, where the kitchenette used to be.

“It’s a good thing I know so much about stain removal, ironing and the proper pressing of suits,” Ianto commented dryly. “Should we be unable to reverse the changes, I can still run the cover shop. My Tad would be so proud!”

“With those legs?” Jack grinned. “It would be a criminal waste. Okay, Tosh, show us how the changes took place.”

“Coming up,” Tosh switched back to recorded footage, and they could all see Andy, in his full height, wearing his uniform, enter the tourist office. He thumped on the counter to get someone’s – _anyone_ ’s – attention and called Gwen’s name repeatedly.

When the metamorphosis hit, the whole shop was filled with thick, white fog, so that they couldn’t really see anything. After the fog had dissipated, the shop had already morphed into the dry cleaner’s, and Andy was having his current size and – admittedly very good – looks.

“Shit!” Jack summarized succinctly. “That was a big fat nothing. This time, we don’t even know _how_ it happened.”

“No, but we can assume it was the same process as by us all,” Tosh replied. “I can show you the footage from my workstation, but…”

“… it wouldn’t give us any more details,” Jack finished. “Show us anyway, just to be sure. We can’t ignore the smallest thing that might be different.”

But Tosh’ metamorphosis hadn’t been any different from that of Jack or Owen, and based on that fact they could be reasonably sure that Ianto, too, had changed in a similar fashion.

“Why the heck don’t we have surveillance down in the Archives anyway?” Owen asked. Ianto gave him an eyeroll.

“Cos all the top secret alien stuff is stored in there perhaps?” he retorted. “It wouldn’t be exactly _secret_ if there were video footage of it, would it?”

“Aren’t we forgetting something?” Andy asked. “Where’s Gwen? What happened to her?”

“I don’t know,” Tosh admitted. “She hasn’t shown up anywhere on the footage.”

“Has anyone seen her shortly before we all passed out?” Jack asked.

“I have,” Ianto said. “When I started packing those artefacts in the storage room away, she was, well, playing with them, as usual.”

“Is she fucking _insane_?” Jack exploded. “I have explicitly told her _not_ to touch those things. That they were not safe.”

Ianto looked at him in mild exasperation. “And how often did she listen when you told her _not_ to do something? Get real, Jack!”

“Good point,” Jack admitted. “Well, let’s find her. Perhaps she can tell us what she’s done.”

“I’d suggest starting with the storage room,” Ianto rose from his seat with the grace of a ballet-dancer. He seemed to get a grip on the working of his new body – and the effects of it – in a surprisingly short time. Jack found that incredibly sexy.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
They entered the room and looked around for Gwen… or anyone who could be Gwen, considering the circumstances. All they could see at first were the alien artefacts, though, glowing or spinning or flashing on the table.

“Is everything as it’s supposed to be?” Jack asked. He hadn’t had the time to take a closer look at this particular set of stuff yet, which was the reason why everyone but Tosh had been told to stay away from it.

“I’m not sure,” Ianto answered thoughtfully. “Something is… different, but I can’t tell you what it is, not off the top of my head. I’ll need to compare the artefacts with the archive photos in the database. Tosh has made digital…”

He couldn’t finish, however, because a whiny, petulant – although unmistakably male – voice interrupted him.

“Took Jack long enough to send someone to help me. It’s so like him to fool around with some blonde bimbo while a member of his team is in danger. Who the hell are you two anyway?”

Looking for the source of that shrill voice, they finally spotted a four-foot-short, squarely built, bearded… creature with collar-length, yellow hair on his unproportionally large head and very short arms. They exchanged baffled looks. None of them had ever seen a creature like this, and that, after all those years with Torchwood, was a lot to say.

On the other hand, the… troll had a wide gap between his large front teeth, and his eyes, while watery blue, were unnaturally wide with overacted emotion. In fact, they seemed in danger to roll off his skull. He was also pouting, which looked fairly ridiculous on that drab face.

“Well, Gwen,” Jack said after a long moment of silence, “it seems you’ve overdone yourself this time.”

“What do you mean?” the strangely-shaped creature now housing Gwen’s consciousness protested. “I didn’t do anything!”

“You were poking around alien tech you’d been told to leave alone,” Ianto corrected. The little troll gave him a baleful look.

“You’re boring, girl! In fact, you sound just like Ianto.”

“Why, thank you,” Ianto replied. “I take that as a compliment. You seem to be right, Jack,” he added, turning to his boss. “The gender-swap apparently doesn’t change the personality.”

Gwen-troll stared at them, her mouth hanging open. “Gender-swap? What are you _talking_ about?”

“You really _are_ a little slow, aren’t you?” Ianto was almost indecently amused by the sight of her desperate – and utterly futile – efforts to understand things. “I _am_ Ianto, and this is Jack. Owen is now a girl, and poor Tosh is an ugly bloke. Oh, and your ex-partner, Andy, is hotter than my Granny Olwyn’s chilli sauce.”

“You’re insane!” Gwen snapped. “There isn’t such thing as a gender swap.

“Isn’t there?” Ianto said with a smug smile that would have looked even better on his true face, but was a thing of beauty nonetheless. “Then why are you a four-feet-tall, bearded little troll now? One that could easily pass under the table?”

Gwen-troll looked from them to the tabletop that was in her eye level now… and passed out unceremoniously.

“What is this whole fainting business again?” Jack groused. “I’m too old and too heavy to carry my unconscious team members around the Hub all day! Can’t you give me a hand with her? She _looks_ small, but believe me, she weighs a ton in this form.”

“Sorry, can’t do,” Ianto replied airily. “I’m still learning how to walk on these high heels, you see. It’s all a question of balance…”

“You were barefoot when I had to carry Owen, and you didn’t help me with him, either,” Jack complained.

Ianto gave him The Eyebrow™. “You _insisted_ on carrying him, so that you could feel him up while he couldn’t punch you in the nose, remember? So stop complaining,” he returned. “There’s no use to deny it. I’ve seen you. So shut up and take Gwen to the others while I get the photos from the database to check out this stuff here… _sir_ ,” he added with exaggerated emphasis.

Despite the unexpectedly heavy weight of the Gwen-troll threatening to throw his back, Jack couldn’t suppress a lewd grin. Ianto in dominant mode, regardless of male or female, was sheer irresistibly sexy. It was a real shame that they didn’t have time for _that_ sort of entertainment right now.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
Tosh cheered up considerably when she saw Jack dumping the Gwen-troll onto the sofa… and that not too gently. She might be an ugly male geek now, but at least she was still _human_. What kind of species Gwen had turned into was a complete mystery for her, though. She told so.

“Jack, you’ve travelled through space and time with the Doctor for… I don’t know for how long,” she said. “Have you ever seen an alien like this?

Jack shook his head. “Nope. And I _have_ seen my fair share of them.”

“But I think _I have_ ,” Owen said, narrowing his now oh-so-pretty eyes. “I just can’t remember where.”

“On archive photos perhaps?” Tosh suggested,

Owen shook his head, his long, honey-blonde hair flying. “No, I’m fairly sure it had nothing to do with Torchwood. Somewhere else…”

“Where?” Jack pressed. Owen just shrugged.

“I dunno, perhaps in some computer game…” he snapped with his well-manicured, slender fingers. “Of course! She looks like the gnomes in that new _Baldur’s Gate_ computer game. Not clothing-wise, obviously, but the size, the proportions, the features…”

Jack looked at him doubtfully. “Yeah, right. You should examine her thoroughly, though. Take some samples and stuff. We need to know what she is now, genetically.”

Owen gave him a crooked grin. “That might not be easy. These new _Baldur’s Gate_ gnomes have an extremely tough skin and a very dense muscle tissue. My needles would likely break should I try to give her an injection. And I warn you: gnomes are much stronger than they look.”

“...in your game,” Jack said wryly. Owen shrugged again.

“Well, she _is_ unexpectedly heavy, isn’t she?”

“Yeah, but…” Jack was still not buying it.

“That comes from the high muscle density,” Owen explained. “Muscle is always much heavier than simple fat. That’s why it’s so hard to get rid of it when one tries to lose weight.”

“Man!” Andy looked at him in naked adoration. “You do know your stuff, don’t you? Smart, as well as pretty. I like that.”

Owen rolled those pretty eyes, annoyed. “Andy, stop hitting at me! I told you, I’m _not_ gay!”

“So?” Andy didn’t seem to see the problem. “Neither am I.”

“Then why are you hitting at me?” Owen asked, exasperated.

“Well, you’re a hot chick now,” Andy said if that would explain everything.

“That doesn’t change a _thing_!” Owen declared forcefully.

Andy gave him a positively sultry look. “It does, in my book.”

“Arrgh!” Owen threw his hands in the air in frustration. “Someone save me from this hormonally overloaded teenager here!”

“It’s different, being the _prey_ for a change, isn’t it?” Ianto asked quietly, startling them; they hadn’t heard him enter. The fact that he was wearing his spare socks instead of the suicidal boots might have been an explanation.

“Have you found anything?” Jack gestured at the folder in Ianto’s hand.

Ianto nodded. “Possibly. Care to see it, sir?”

“I’d care to see a great many things you have to show,” Jack leered.

Owen rolled his eyes again. He seemed to do that a lot lately. “Do we really have to listen to _this_? Get a room, you two!”

“Not necessary,” Ianto declared tartly. “I have my standards, and in this current shape – or rather the lack thereof – Jack doesn’t happen to meet them.”

“Hey!” Jack protested. “There’s nothing wrong with my shape!”

Ianto gave him a pitying look. “Jack. Get a grip. There’s no way I’d get intimate with you as long as you aren’t… well, yourself again. Besides, can you imagine what our babies would look like, should you manage to knock me up while we are in these bodies?”

Tosh grinned, and so did Andy – they seemed to have developed an easy understanding in that short time already. Some sort of male bonding perhaps. Owen, however, put his fingers in his ears and groaned.

“So _not_ listening to this!”

Ianto grinned at Jack. “Sir, I believe we should relocate to the storage room… for the peace of Owen’s mind. He seems to be fragile enough at the moment as it is.”

A thrown pillow hit him squarely in the back. “I’ll give you _fragile_ , teaboy!”

Ianto shook his head in mock sadness. “Always with the name-calling. Are you never gonna grow up, sweetheart?”

“Owen!” Jack interrupted the rapidly escalating banter. “Try to examine Gwen anyway. There ought to be a few tests you _can_ run, cos I’m not buying the gnome thing. We’re not in a fantasy game. Tosh, try to figure out more about the game Owen mentioned. Perhaps there is a connection after all, unlikely as it seems. I’m gonna see what Ianto has found.”

“And what should I do?” Andy asked. He hated waiting and being useless.

Jack grinned at him. “Keep hitting at Owen. Perhaps, if you’re persistent enough, he will see the light, after all. I know _I would_.”

“Yeah, what a surprise,” Owen muttered but went for his med kit obediently. “Have you _ever_ managed to keep it in your pants, Harkness?”

“No,” Jack replied honestly. “What would be the fun in _that_?”

Owen looked at the ceiling. “Right. Forget I even asked. Just… just find out what happened and how we undo it. Please.”


	4. We Are Learning Who We Are

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It turns out that things are a lot more complicated than our fearless heroes would have expected to be. But that’s Torchwood for you.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
 **PART FOUR: WE ARE LEARNING WHO WE ARE**

Jack followed Ianto back to the storage room where Artefacts number one through five were still waiting to be taken to the Archives. Apparently, Ianto had begun to take them away backwards.

“So?” he asked, a little impatiently.

There was the canine skull in the jar; the Draconian holoprojector, showing the three-dimensional images of unknown stellar bodies; the alien soup tureen containing the forcefield of no visible purpose; the Alzarian tool with the whirling blades – _and_ something that looked like a translucent stained glass Tiffany lamp, filled with blue and golden light. It was beautiful, but…

“Wait a minute!” Jack realized. “This isn’t what Artefact #2 is supposed to look like. Wasn’t that the metal arch of Chulan technology marks on it? The one with the winged pendant?”

“It was… in its inactive state,” Ianto pointed at the winged brooch on top of the ‘lamp’. “And there is the pendant. We know some of this stuff changes its shape when activated… well, I have to say, this is quite the metamorphosis! Just like…”

“Just like with us,” Jack finished for him grimly. Ianto nodded.

“Exactly. Whatever this device is, and frankly, I haven’t got a clue, it has to do something with our problem.”

“But how the hell did Gwen manage to activate it?” Jack wondered. “The UNIT scientists have tried everything they could think of to make it do something; it never worked.”

“Well, scientists work methodically,” Ianto said. “The thought to start poking at it like a bloody fool possibly never occurred to them.”

“Fools jump in where angels fear to thread,” Jack murmured. “Sometimes it can be a great advantage. Most of the time, however, it leads to great disasters.”

Ianto nodded wordlessly, because really, what could he possibly have said to that?

“All right,” Jack said. “Can we switch it off? Perhaps the effects will be reversed when it’s no longer actively working, whatever it is it does.”

“I reckon it won’t be so easy,” Ianto said. “Besides, we need to ask how she’s switched the bloody thing _on_ to begin with… and pray that the off switch is the same one as the on switch.”

“If she still remembers,” Jack wasn’t very optimistic about that. “Look at all this stuff; it seems she’s fumbled with every single artefact in this room.”

“Fortunately, the rest of them has turned out quite harmless,” Ianto replied, switching off the Draconian holoprojector with a mental instruction and touching a sensor field on the side of the ‘soup tureen’, at which the forcefield of unknown purpose promptly collapsed. Then he held up the jar with the skull again. It blubbered merrily at him, and the skull began jump and down.

“Jack, can I keep this in my office, down in the Archives? It doesn’t do anything, and it’s kinda cute. I always wanted a dog when I was a kid but never got one.”

“Ianto,” Jack tried to stay patient,” it’s not a _dog_! It’s a frigging _skull_ , and we don’t even know what kind of creature it used to be while it was still alive.”

“So?” Ianto tilted his head to the side and tried the puppy-eyed routine. “You keep a hand in a jar in your office, why can’t I have a skull? It’s _friendly_. I like the way it blubbers when touched; and the skull is much like a dog, jumping up and down happily to greet its master. It’s lonely down there, you know, and I _do_ spend a lot of time in the Archives.”

Jack knew, of course, that he was being shamelessly manipulated, but it was hard to resist Ianto with the puppy eyes, no matter in which form. Besides, it was so rare that Ianto would ask anything for just himself; so if he wanted to keep the stupid skull, why shouldn’t he have it?

“All right, all right,” he said, all too aware that once again, he’d been out-charmed by his young lover, and not really minding it. “Keep the damn thing – but be careful with it.”

“I promise I won’t let Gwen anywhere near it,” Ianto replied solemnly. “We should go back to the others, though, and find out what she’s done with the Chulan artefact. I don’t dare to experiment with it. It might make everything worse.”

“A wise decision,” Jack nodded. “Chulan technology is tricky. I once had a little Chulan spaceship. She was a beauty, with particle transporter system and a semi-sentient board computer and stuff – I loved her. But she could have a will of her own sometimes, and it was better not to mess with her.”

“What happened to her?” Ianto asked, intrigued by the rare chance to learn something about Jack’s mysterious past. Jack sighed.

“I had to blow her up during the Blitz, to save London. That was how I met the Doctor and Rose for the first time.”

“And like every story concerning them, I’m never gonna learn more about it, am I?” Ianto commented, somewhat bitterly. He didn’t mind Jack still having that special connection with the Doctor… well, not all too much. What really bothered him was Jack’s reluctance to share his past.

“Hey,” Jack said softly. “Enough of that. I’ll tell you the story when we get out of this mess, I promise. It’s not such a big secret. Its’ just hard to speak about it; about the time when I was still mortal.”

“I understand,” Ianto replied quietly. “And I’m not sulking, really. It’s just…”

“It’s just hard to be left out, I know,” Jack finished for him. “I _will_ tell you, honestly. You deserve to know how I’ve become the person who I am now. Just let us solve our current problem first, okay?”

Ianto nodded. “Okay. Back to the others, then?”

When they got back to the main Hub area, they found Gwen conscious again… and in complete hysterics. Her voice, not a pleasant-sounding one to begin with in this form, had acquired a particularly shrill quality that could have shattered glass. Tosh, running a search on her computer, was covering her ears, wincing in pain.

“For God’s sake, Owen, _do_ something with her!”

“What am I supposed to do?” Owen snapped. “I’ve already tried to give her a sedative, and the needle fucking _broke_. I can’t sedate her; I can’t take any blood or tissue samples to check her DNA, nothing! And she’s not very cooperative, either, as you can see.”

“That’s not her way to deal with things; it never was,” Andy agreed. “Perhaps Captain Harkness can reason with her.”

“Yeah, because it worked so well before,” Owen muttered. Andy smiled at him fondly.

“Don’t be so negative, sweetheart. Let him try first.”

Owen looked like he’d hit him any moment; then he looked at Jack and made a sweeping gesture at Gwen. “All yours, Captain.”

Jack sighed. Dealing with Gwen’s all-too-frequent dramatics had become a real annoyance lately. Then he grabbed the stunted creature’s shoulders and forced it – _her_ – to look at him.

“Gwen!” he said in an authoritative tone. “Look at me! Listen to me! Dammit, just this one fucking time, _listen_ to me!”

There was something in his voice, something really harsh and threatening that got through to Gwen’s fogged mind. She stopped ranting and screeching and stared at him, open-mouthed and with bulging eyes.

“Okay,” Jack said, “that’s a beginning. “Now, tell me what you have done with that artefact. The metallic arch with the winged pendant. It has changed, totally. How have you got it to do that?”

Gwen started whining again. “I haven’t done _anything_! I just wanted to see if I could stop the pendant…”

“And?” Ianto pressed. “Could you?”

Gwen began to sob uncontrollably. “It stopped for a moment, but then… then it started changing… and I hurt so much… oh, God, I hurt so much…”

“Okay,” Jack said with forced patience. “Calm down, Gwen. Ianto, bring her a glass of water – _from my office_.”

Tosh and Owen stiffened, hearing the last words. They both knew what that particular instruction meant. The Retcon pills were kept in the safe in Jack’s office. And since Jack had already messed up the dosage with Gwen once, he was now leaving it to Ianto who had a lot of practice in administering the stuff.

“At once, sir,” Ianto replied, and returned with the glass of water, liberally laced with Retcon, in record time.

Jack took it from him and handed it to Gwen. “Here, drink this. You must replenish your fluids after all that crying.”

Which was a fairly stupid argument, but typically, Gwen fell for it. Being the focus of attention was all she needed, as always. She gulped down the whole glass in one go… and seemed to calm down gradually.

“Such a useless thing,” she muttered. “Did nothing, just swayed back and forth, back and forth…” her bulging, watery eyes slowly fell shut, and within a minute, she was out like a light, snoring softly.

Andy looked from one Torchwood member to another. “What have you done to her? Rhys is gonna kill me!”

“Nothing dramatic,” Jack answered. “I gave her a strong sedative, with a little amnesia pill. She will sleep through the next two or three days, and when she wakes up, she won’t remember anything.”

“For how far back?” Owen asked. Jack held his gaze unwaveringly.

“Two years. It’s the best for us all. If we find a way to reverse the effects, she can return to Rhys and live happily ever after.”

“And if we can’t?” Tosh asked quietly.

“Then we’ll have no other choice than to keep her in one of the cells until we can,” Jack replied bluntly. “We can’t allow her to run free like this. At least the rest of us stayed human; we won’t draw unwanted attention. But Gwen… who knows why she turned out so differently.”

“I’d be more interested to know why we’ve turned into exactly these persons that we are now,” Ianto said.

“Ummm…” Tosh coughed. “I might be able to answer _that_.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
The others gathered around her workstation at once, eager to learn more.

“I’ve run a face recognition search on our current looks, and got this,” she said, calling up something that looked like a personal file on the screen. It showed the middle-aged black man whose looks Jack was currently having. However, the file didn’t wear the Torchwood logo; it was apparently set up by the Chicago Police.

“Captain Richard Page,” Tosh read out loud. “He supposedly retired five years ago from the police department, but is really working for Special Unit 2. His left hand is a prosthetic replacement for one he lost in Vietnam. Captain Page is a skilled tactician and administrator, with enough leadership abilities to keep his underlings in line despite their varied personalities.”

“Strange,” Ianto commented. “It doesn’t say what he actually _does_ there, or what this Special Unit 2 is.”

“There’s more,” Tosh called up another file, clearly that of the lovely blonde woman Owen was now. “This is Detective Kate Benson, suspended from normal duty at the Chicago Police for reasons not further explained here. Recruited by Special Unit 2 for temporary assignment two years ago.”

“That can’t be a coincidence,” Owen said. “They both work for the same organization. What about the rest of us?”

“The same,” Tosh called up the file of Andy’s alter ego. “Detective Nicholas O’Malley, senior agent of Special Unit 2, affiliated with the Chicago Police. He and Kate are partners.”

“You see?” Andy grinned at Owen. “It’s _meant_ to be, apparently.”

“Not _that_ kind of partners,” Tosh corrected. “They work together, for God’s sake!”

“And you?” Ianto asked. “I mean, your counterpart?”

“Is obviously their resident nerd,” Tosh called up the file in question. “Gah, and he’s called Jonathan, too. He could have had every name in the calendar, but no, he just _had_ to be called Jonathan!”

Jack ignored her rant. “What about Ianto?”

“He's cracked the jackpot, it seems,” Tosh showed the file of the gorgeous blonde woman. “Meet Alice Cramer, Damage Control Officer of Special Unit 2. She left for LA, two years ago, to become an actress. Apparently, she had quite a few shootings, mostly for ads; but after a year, she changed her mind and returned to the police,” Tosh smiled at Ianto. “Seems that she’s the public face of Special Unit 2; their clean-up girl who deals with the press and the police, and with witnesses who’ve seen things they wasn’t supposed to see. Sounds familiar?”

“Surprisingly so,” Ianto replied. “Just like with Jack and yourself. As if the device had looked for similarities when it changed us.”

“Why did it make _me_ a copper instead of Gwen, then?” Owen asked.

Ianto looked at him in fake surprise. “What? Would you prefer to be the gnome?”

“Of course not!” Owen scowled. “I just don’t understand why it didn’t make me their medical officer. That would have been closer; and then perhaps I wouldn’t be a girl now.”

“Perhaps they don’t _have_ one,” Ianto suggested. “Whatever top secret stuff they are dealing with, they’re still a police department. Those don’t have their own medics.”

“Speaking of gnomes,” Jack interrupted, “have you found a file about the one Gwen seems to be now?”

“Yup,” Tosh called up the file in question, “but it isn’t very helpful. It only says that he – well, _she_ – is called Carl and is the snitch and the mascot of the unit. In exchange for information, they sometimes look the other way when he commits minor crimes.”

“What crimes?” Andy asked with a frown.

Tosh checked the file again. “He seems to be a busy little fellow. Kleptomania, petty theft, dealing with stolen items… the whole nine miles, up to armed robbery, actually, where he prefers to remain in the background and pull the strings.”

“Why on Earth would the device turn Gwen into a petty criminal?” Andy was baffled.

“Perhaps it’s psychic and takes orientation from one’s basic tendencies, rather from the actual work we are doing,” Ianto suggested.

“Gwen is _not_ a criminal!” Andy protested. If nothing else, he was a loyal soul.

“No, but she seems to have no problems with pushing herself into the positions and relationships of other people,” Tosh said quietly. “She _does_ have the tendency to take what she wants, regardless of everyone else’s feelings. If the device looked for a match for this Carl person, she’d have been the closest thing.”

“Now you’re exaggerating, Tosh!” Owen said. “We all have done things we aren’t proud of; none of us is any better than Gwen in that area. At least she never meant to cause all that chaos and destruction.”

“True, but the device didn’t have to find a match to a ruthless mafia boss,” Tosh pointed out. “It needed someone _petty_. Are you telling me she wouldn’t match _those_ criteria?”

The answer to that was so obvious that Owen didn’t even bother with it. Even Andy had to admit that of all of them, Gwen was clearly the closest match. Jack, though, had something else on his mind.

“How did you get your hands on these files anyway?” he asked Tosh. “Special Unit 2 seems to be an eyes-only police organization. Even with your hacker skills, it should have been harder to get the personal data. It’s not as if they would advertise on the internet… do they?”

“Of course not,” Tosh replied grimly. “The thing is, Jack… these aren’t actually _their_ files. They are _ours_.”

“What?!” the others cried in unison.

“Well, they _used_ to be our files,” Tosh corrected herself. “They were stored in our own database recording Torchwood personnel. Our original files have been replaced with these here.”

“What about the original ones?” Jack asked.

“Gone,” Tosh replied. “These are the only ones we’ve got about ourselves.”

“And the files of previous Torchwood personnel?” Ianto asked.

“Those are unchanged,” Tosh said. “Save Suzie’s, that is. Hers has been replaced by that of the previous Special Unit tech advisor, a guy named Sean Redman, who left the unit a year ago. Apparently, the device thinks in terms of complete units.”

“Does this mean that there’s now a male corpse in Suzie’s drawer in the morgue?” Owen asked.

Tosh just shrugged. “No idea. Perhaps. You’ll have to check for yourself.”

“Wait a minute!” Andy said. “If it switches one team for the other, why have _I_ been changed at all?”

Tosh coughed and looked at Ianto, who looked at Jack expectantly.

“Well,” Jack admitted, “I _was_ considering hiring you as a field agent, should we manage to get rid of Gwen on the gentle way. So I had Ianto set up a file for you… just in case.”

“Oh!” that seemed to surprise Andy. He fell silent, digesting the unexpected piece of information and trying to decide whether he should feel flattered or escape as long as he had a chance.

“So,” Ianto said slowly. “If we _are_ Special Unit 2 now, does it matter that they’re running around in _our_ shape in Chicago?”


	5. Higher Powers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You didn’t really think I’d leave Martha out of this, did you? Yes, I know she isn’t supposed to appear in Torchwood before “Reset”, but I love her and wanted her here.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
 **PART FIVE: HIGHER POWERS**

“So,” Ianto said slowly. “If we _are_ Special Unit 2 now, does it matter that they’re running around in our shape in Chicago?”

 _That_ possibility shocked everyone quite a bit.

“Well,” Jack finally said, “we’ll need to use our contacts to get more information about them – assuming, of course, that they’re real people, not just the characters of some silly online computer game. Let’s put Gwen into one of the cells first, just in case. Andy, you better call in sick; it would be hard to explain why you look so much better than you used to. Tosh, Owen, go home and get some rest.”

“What about me?” Ianto asked.

“I need you here,” Jack replied. “You can deal with UNIT bureaucrats a lot better than I. Besides, I’ve got a story to tell you. No, not _that_ one – that needs more time and a different mindset to tell. But I think you’ll be interested anyway.”

“All right,” Ianto said, “But I warn you, I won’t stay all night. A girl needs her beauty sleep, and who knows, perhaps I’ll change my mind one day and return to being a model, after all.”

The others laughed, despite the situation, while Jack tried very hard _not_ to imagine a scantily-clad female Ianto posing for Playboy – and failed. Ianto must have guessed what he was thinking because gave him a sultry look that could have melted the polar caps and swayed over to the autopsy room to get a gurney.

With Andy’s help, they hauled Gwen the Gnome onto it and used the internal lift to get her down to the cells. Having her shut away safely, Ianto went to check on Janet, their resident Weevil – and froze in front of her cell.

“Jack,” he said urgently. “I think you need to see this.”

Alerted by his tone, the others gathered around him and stared into the cell. Instead of the Weevil, a nine-foot-tall, horned and winged creature was squatted in the middle of the place it filled almost completely. It had a bat-like face and huge fangs. Yet it seemed surprisingly peaceful. In fact, it didn’t move at all… as if it had been made of stone. Or hibernating.

“A Gargoyle!” Owen whistled. “I thought they weren’t considered as really existing creatures. Not outside the _White Wolfe_ games, that is.”

“I thought gnomes didn’t exist, either,” Andy pointed out, looking from the Gargoyle to Gwen’s still unconscious form in the next cell. “She’s too bloody heavy to be a mere hallucination, though.”

“Hey, does this mean all Weevils across Cardiff are petrified now?” Owen asked. “Cos that would make our jobs a lot easier… until they wake up and are still nine-feet-tall, clawed and winged monsters, of course.”

“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Jack said. “Go home now and let me call in a few favours. Get some answers. But be here on time in the morning. We’re gonna have a lot of research to do.”

“Can I come, too?” Andy asked hopefully. Jack shrugged.

“Sure. You need to be changed back, just like the rest of us. And perhaps it will prove useful if you learn something about the work we do… should you ever decide to join the club.”

“Let’s talk about _that_ later, when I’m done with being freaked out completely,” Andy offered his arm to Owen gallantly. “Shall I take you home, Miss Harper?”

“I don’t need your help, you bloody walking hormone!” Owen growled, and Tosh and Ianto exchanged identical grins.

“Takes one to know one,” Ianto commented dryly.

Tosh nodded. “Isn’t it just lovely when the tables are turned?” she asked sweetly.

“Actually,” Jack interrupted, before Owen could have exploded into Ianto’s face, although _that_ would have been a spectacular catfight between the two gorgeous blondes, “I’d find it better if Andy took you home, Owen. You’re a girl now, and still not used to this new body. Be reasonable and let him go with you.”

Owen shot him a look that could have taken Myfanwy off the sky.

“I’ll make you pay for that, Harkness!” he promised.

“I’m quaking in my boots,” Jack replied blandly.

“You’re not _wearing_ boots,” Ianto pointed out reasonably, and Tosh giggled, which sounded _really_ weird, considering her current shape and voice.

“Semantics,” Jack replied. “All right, gang, out with you! We’ll see us again in the morning.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
“So,” Ianto said when all the others had left. “Care to tell me what this is all about? Cos I’ve never dealt with UNIT for you, and you know that. They wouldn’t be willing to talk to _anyone_ below command level. And even if they did, they’d never believe that a _woman_ calling them would be actually me.”

Jack nodded. “True. But I need your help with opening Suzie’s drawer and checking if she… well, if she’s still her properly dead self. You know all the security codes by heart, I assume, and I’m just too tired to look them up in all those hidden files.”

“Very well,” Ianto said after some consideration. “As much as I do _not_ wish to open that particular can of worms again, I reckon we ought to make sure she’s still there. Who knows what the artefact has done to her.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Jack replied grimly.

The fastest way to get down to the Archives was the spiral staircase – and then to follow Ianto who knew them better than anyone else. Jack might be living in the Hub – and had been affiliated to the Cardiff branch for a very long time – but he only got down there when he absolutely had to. It wasn’t a very cheerful environment, and he sometimes wondered how Ianto could bear to spend the major part of his time in these bleak corridors. Especially considering the fact that Lisa was still there, lying dead and frozen in one of the cryogenic units as well.

Yeah, Ianto more than deserved to have that canned dog’s skull to cheer him up during work.

“All right,” Ianto took a deep breath and stopped in front of Suzie’s resting place. “Here we are. You armed? Just in case.”

“Yeah,” Jack pulled out his Webley… which, he realised, wasn’t a Webley anymore, but a police issue sidearm. Well, at least it was loaded. “Go on!”

Ianto typed in the codes and removed the extra security locks. Then he pulled out the tray that was supposed to contain Suzie’s repeatedly dead body. He took another deep breath and opened the body bag.

“Here she is,” he said. “Still dead… but not Suzie anymore, I’m afraid.”

Jack stepped closer and stared down at the corpse in the body bag. It bore the multiple gunshot wounds that had finally killed Suzie for good – wounds caused by bullets of _his_ weapon – but it was the dead body of a thin-faced young man with messy brown hair.

Jack released a breath he hadn’t been aware he was holding.

“Well,” he said, “at least she’s still here. Let’s put her back and seal the drawer again.”

“You know, of course, that we’ll have to do this again if – _when_ – we manage to reverse the effect,” Ianto commented while helping his boss to do just that. “We’ll have to make sure she’s turned back.”

“That’s what I so _love_ in Torchwood,” Jack replied sarcastically. “You even have to check on the dead regularly. Speaking of which…” he trailed off hesitantly, not really knowing how to break this to Ianto. But Ianto understood what he meant.

“We need to take a look at Lisa, too,” he said tonelessly.

“Yeah, she wasn’t exactly part of the team, but…” Jack hesitated again.

“But the device probably didn’t know that,” Ianto finished the thought. “It’s all right, sir. I understand.”

“Can you bear to see her again?” Jack asked. “I can do it alone, you know.”

Ianto shook his head firmly. “No, sir, that would be too dangerous. She… she could be anything – or anyone – right now. We have to do it. Just cover my back, will you?”

Jack nodded. “Always. You’ll need those special security codes, though, that I put on her drawer when…”

“I know them,” Ianto interrupted with a sad little smile. “Jack, it’s been a _year_! If I still hadn’t figured them out, you should fire me!”

Jack felt an unexpected chill creeping down his spine as he realised that – in theory anyway – Ianto could have gotten his cyber-girlfriend out of cold storage and whisked away any time he wanted. Apparently, he’d understood what a bad idea _that_ would be, but the mere possibility was enough to give Jack nightmares – in the rare times when he slept, that is.

He really should have learned by now _not_ to underestimate Ianto. Never again.

“All right,” he said, “let’s get over with this as fast as we can.”

They repeated the routine moves with Lisa’s storage unit and pulled out the tray. Jack moved to open the body bag, wanting to spare Ianto the nightmarish sight of the dismembered Cyberwoman, but Ianto didn’t let him.

“Please, Jack… I need to do this myself.”

Slowly, carefully, he opened the body bag – and broke down in tears at once. There was no dismembered Cyberwoman in that bag. It was the human Lisa, undamaged and beautiful like the day before the Battle of Canary Wharf – but also very much dead. With the monster Lisa had become, he could have dealt. Had been prepared to. Seeing his beautiful girl again, as she had once been, yet still dead, was simply too much.

Jack slammed the tray back into the drawer and re-sealed the door in a great hurry. Then he took the devastated Ianto in his arm and simply let him cry. What else could he have done? He’d never met the real Lisa in the flesh, but seeing her like this had made her a _person_ for him, not just a threat that had to be neutralized. A person whom Ianto had loved so much he’d have sacrificed _everything_ to get her back.

He wondered briefly if what Ianto might feel for _him_ would ever come close to that kind of devotion.

As if answering his question, Ianto finally calmed down and sniffed affectionately into his neck. “You still smell like… like yourself, you know,” he said, winding himself out of Jack’s arms. “Bloody fifty-first-century pheromones!”

“And yet you refuse to have sex with me,” Jack replied with mock sadness. “Am I really so awful as Captain Page?”

Ianto smiled at him through his tears; he was truly heartbreaking as a damsel in distress. “It’s not that, Jack. Please give me some credit. It just… it just doesn’t feel _right_ , you know? These bodies don’t belong to us, we… we shouldn’t use them that way.”

“If our counterparts now have _our_ bodies, they might not be so considerate,” Jack said with a lewd grin. “Considering what an improvement it would be for them… well, save that poor gnome, perhaps.”

Ianto swatted him, laughing… albeit with just a hint of hysteria in his laughter. “You are really evil!” Then he paused for a moment and added carefully. “Do you think we should check on Dr. Tanizaki, too? I’ve never been so grateful in my life that we had at least that poor Annie incinerated. She deserved a proper burial.”

Jack kissed him on the forehead. “Owen and I can do it tomorrow. Even if he’s been changed, he’ll still be dead.”

“Are you sure about that?” Ianto seemed a bit doubtful. Jack shrugged.

“All the evidence points in that direction. Let’s go back up and call UNIT from my office.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
Ianto followed him obediently, making a detour to the coffee machine. After _that_ sight, he needed some reinforcements, in the form of caffeine – the best kind there was. When he finally arrived to Jack’s office, with two steaming mugs of the best coffee he was able to produce – and _that_ was a very high level of caffeine magic indeed – he found his boss standing in the office door, arms crossed, staring down into the main Hub area in genuine amusement.

“What is it?” Ianto followed his look.

At first, he couldn’t see anything out of order. The usual mess on Owen’s workstation. The usual neat order on Tosh’ desk. The usual lack of any sign of actual work at Gwen’s. The usual half-emptied pizza boxes lying everywhere, as he hadn’t had the time to clean up after his colleagues yet. Sometimes he wondered how long it would take them to completely drown in rubbish without him.

Then he suddenly spotted it: a tentacled green creature, slowly making its way through the garbage and gobbling it up with obvious delight.

“And I thought this day couldn’t get any weirder,” he commented. “What is this… this _thing_ and where has it come from?”

“My guess would be Myfanwy,” Jack replied. “After all, it’s helping _you_ with your job; and you’ve _always_ been Myfanwy’s favourite pet. Even if you might believe it’s the other way round.”

“Adopted by a pterodactyl,” Ianto mused. “Only in Torchwood…”

For a while, they watched the tentacled monster deal with the garbage by simply eating it (and wasn’t _that_ the coolest method of recycling, ever?) then they returned to Jack’s office to enjoy the coffee and finally make that call to UNIT. 

Ianto listened curiously to Jack talking to someone called Martha Jones. They sounded awfully familiar with each other but not in the usual flirtatious manner Jack handled people of both genders as a rule. He even asked this Martha person about her family… and seemed to know various members of said family quite well. _And_ he was very open with her about the recent events.

“I didn’t know whom to ask without giving away what’s happened to us,” he explained. “But since UNIT does have connections with the law enforcement in the States… no, you don’t have to come here, our doctor can deal with it so far… well, okay, if you insist… don’t be ridiculous, I’ll be happy to see you again… but I’ll need that info first, Martha, it’s important! Okay, thanks,” and he hung up.

“Well," he turned to Ianto, “it seems UNIT might help us with finding out more about this Special Unit 2.”

“But not with the device itself?”

“Nah; they sent it to us cos they had no clue what it was and how it worked. They never told me where it came from. I’ll run a search later.”

“The _how_ should be clear by now,” Ianto said. “Still having difficulties with the _why_ , though. _And_ with the _how to undo it_ part. By the way, who is this Martha Jones person? You never mentioned her before.”

“That’s the story I wanted to tell you. Sit.” Ianto sat, sipped his coffee and looked at Jack expectantly. “You remember the time I went away with the Doctor, do you?”

Ianto gave him his patented look of exasperation. “Are you kidding? You haven’t told me much, but _what_ you told me was enough to give me nightmares. You know I can’t take it well if you die, no matter how often I have to see it.”

“Martha was the one who escaped from the _Valiant_ ,” Jack explained. “The one who organized the resistance on Earth… who saved us all – _and_ the Doctor. She, me and her family are now the only ones on this planet who can still remember the Year That Never Was. I trust her unconditionally.”

“And she works for UNIT now?” Ianto asked, trying to suppress his jealousy about that last declaration.

Jack nodded. “She’s a doctor; a really good one, an expert on alien lifeforms… small wonder, eh? But she also has connections. She’s promised to find out everything about this Special Unit 2 by tomorrow. And if anyone can manage that, it’s her.”

“So pretty, eh?” Ianto smiled. Jack shook his head.

“Pretty, yeah… but we never had anything with each other. She was… otherwise interested. And as I’ve come to realize, so was I.”

“Yeah, flattery will get you nowhere,” Ianto replied, still smiling. It was nice to hear it, though. “So, Jack I’m going home now, in case you don’t need me here anymore.”

“Always… but not at the moment,” Jack replied. “Go home and rest; it’s been a long, hard day for us all. Martha will hopefully have an answer for us tomorrow.”

“What about you?” Ianto asked. “Shouldn’t you rest, too?”

“I will, eventually,” Jack answered. “Right now, I’ve got some thinking to do.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
As usual, Ianto was the first to arrive in the Hub in the next morning. He’d managed to find sensible, flat shoes in a supermarket on his was home that was open twenty-four hours a day, as well as a pair of simple jeans, and was now feeling a little more himself again.

Jack, of course, was a little disappointed by the lack of the high heels and the miniskirt. He said so.

“Keep your mind off the gutter, or I’ll put you on decaf,” Ianto warned as he wandered to the coffee machine to revitalise his boss who clearly hadn’t slept a minute last night. “Has Martha called?”

Jack nodded. “Just five minutes ago. Apparently, Special Unit 2 really does exist. They’re indeed based in Chicago and have the appointed task to hunt down creatures they call the Links – lifeforms that have supposedly developed parallel to mankind, just kept a low profile – and they are still very much themselves.”

“Are you sure about that part?” Ianto asked doubtfully. Jack grinned.

“Oh yeah. Martha spoke to the original Alice Cramer personally. She says they hit off at once. She also spotted Captain Page and the blonde officer in the background who’s now Owen, what was her name again?”

“Detective Kate Benson,” Ianto supplied, and Jack nodded.

“Yep, that one. At least three of the real team are accounted for, and we have no reason to believe that the rest isn’t.”

“I see,” Ianto thought about it for a moment. “That changes the layout of things quite a bit, doesn’t it?”

“You mean we _can_ have sex, after all?” Jack asked hopefully.

“Spare us the trauma of having watch you getting at it,” Owen, once again wearing his own clothes, walked in. Unlike Ianto, he’d changed little enough in stature to be able to do so. “Have you learned anything yet?”

“Not much,” Jack admitted. “Special Unit 2 does indeed exist, but the changes were one-sided.”

“Well, that’s good,” Owen said. “I’d hate to imagine what some blonde chick would do with my body in Chicago. But does it help us in any way?”

“Afraid not,” Jack sighed. “I hope, though, that the visitor who’s due to arrive somewhen during the day might be able to.”

Owen glanced at the CCTV monitor. “Do you mean the weird bloke in the kilt who’s just about to use the invisible lift as if he knew it’s there?” he asked.

Jack followed his look and groaned in despair.

“Oh, no! Tell me that I’m hallucinating!”


	6. A Strange Little Man

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And this was where my fantasy ran free with me… so sorry. I'm afraid the working of the artefact has nothing to do with science, not even with fictional science, but that's the best I could come up with.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
 **PART SIX: A STRANGE LITTLE MAN**

Ianto watched the unfamiliar man wearing a kilt get out of his convertible, close the door and march towards the invisible lift with a confidence that revealed that he knew exactly what he was looking for.

“You know the man, Jack?” he asked. Jack nodded.

“Oh, yeah. That’s the infamous Archie McAllister, the head of Torchwood Two.”

“The one you always call _a strange little man_?” Owen studied the newcomer as it stepped onto the stone slab of the lift. “Well, he _does_ look a bit strange, but he isn’t that little, actually. What’s he doing here?”

“I wish I knew,” Jack muttered. “Usually, it takes a planetwide crisis to get him out of his den in Glasgow.”

“ _Are_ we having a planetwide crisis?” Ianto inquired with suddenly spiking curiosity.

“Not that I’d know of,” Jack replied. “Of course, we’ve been a little preoccupied with our… erm… _domestic problems_ here.”

“That’s as good a word for it as any,” Ianto agreed amiably, and they watched the invisible lift descend with the unexpected visitor.

The leader of the Glasgow branch – if one could use such a lofty title for someone who was running an insignificant little outpost on his own – was indeed by no means a _little_ man. Not as tall as Jack or Ianto originally had been, of course, but slightly over average height all the same, and not bad-looking at all. With his collar-length brow hair, pale blue eyes and a face that vaguely resembled of a middle-aged Paul McCartney, he had little to nothing in common with his presumably fierce ancestors of the Scottish Highlands, despite the kilt that he was wearing. In truth, he looked rather like a somewhat distracted college professor. He could be in his early forties, tops.

He stepped off the invisible lift and looked around in the Hub with interest. The completely unfamiliar people staring at him didn’t seem to bother him a bit.

“Greetings,” he said with a slight Scottish accent. “I’m Sir Archibald McAllister, leader of Torchwood Two. Can you tell me where I can find Captain Jack Harkness?”

At the same moment, the cog door rolled to the side and Tosh came in, with Andy in tow, both wearing somewhat ill-fitting clothes. Upon seeing the Torchwood Two leader, Tosh’ face lit up in delight like a Christmas tree.

“Archie!” she squealed, hurrying to the visitor with open arms. “What are you doing here?”

In the last moment she stopped, though, and blinked sheepishly. “Oh. Of course you wouldn’t recognise me like this.”

McAllister looked at her questioningly for a moment; then he seemed to realise what must have happened. “Toshiko? Is that you?”

“Afraid so,” Tosh replied, a little surprised by his accurate guess.

“Oh, my,” McAllister frowned. “Have you messed around with that Chulan reality manipulator UNIT handed over to you a couple of weeks ago?”

The collective jaws of the Torchwood Three gang hit the floor simultaneously.

“What on Earth…” Jack began, but McAllister waved impatiently.

“Please, Jack… it _is_ Jack, isn’t it?” Jack nodded, and McAllister continued. “Yeah, thought so. The looks have changed, but not the attitude. Anyway, I might be eccentric in your eyes, but I’m not an idiot, you know. Plus, I always monitor any communications between you and UNIT, so I’m fairly well informed all the time.”

“What?” Owen asked, really annoyed now. “You’ve been spying on us? Don’t you have anything better to do?”

“Not really,” McAllister admitted. “You can’t imagine how boring Glasgow can be, in terms of alien infestation. In fact, the last alien sighted, back in the 1970s, turned out to be a _really_ drunk hippie on a trip, so I have to occupy myself somehow. My cats only need so much attention, and one can’t spend one’s whole time in the gym or in the library. You should be grateful though; if I hadnae monitored your communications, I couldnae be here to help you now.”

“To _help_ us,” Jack repeated. “Does this mean that you actually _know_ what’s happened to us?”

“Oh, aye; at least I can make an educated guess,” McAllister replied. “You’ve mentioned that Chulan reality manipulator to the lady from UNIT, and then you made inquiries about Special Unit 2, an organization you shouldnae even know about; not to mention that our phone conversation broke up in the middle of the sentence yesterday, and I could never reach you again…”

“Wait, wait,” Jack interrupted the verbose Scotsman. “Do you know something about the artefact that we don’t?”

“I should hope so,” McAllister answered a little indignantly. “It’s an old relic, after all. Torchwood Two used to have it for decades; in fact, it usually stood on my desk. Then Yvonne Hartman visited the Glasgow office, spotted it and ordered it to be taken away to London, for further studies. I heard UNIT found it after the Battle of Canary Wharf. I wanted to have it back, but they wouldnae let me.”

“And you didn’t warn them about it?” Jack demanded.

McAllister shrugged. “They wouldnae listen anyway; they never do, unless it is you. Besides, it was a completely harmless little gizmo. Charming, but harmless.”

“Harmless?” Owen said incredulously and made a sweeping gesture at them all. “You call _this_ harmless?”

“Well it never did anything drastic like this before,” McAllister replied. “I donnae know what you’ve done with it, but you must have screwed up royally.”

“Wait, what is it _supposed_ to do?” Tosh asked.

“Well, it _is_ a reality manipulator,” McAllister said matter-of-factly. “Which means it manipulates reality… to a certain degree. It can change the lights in a room, create mental images for entertainment purposes, emanate harmonic resonances to ease one’s sleep… that sort of thing. I often used it to create a holographic environment that was more pleasant than my actual office, which is, frankly, a rather boring place. Working in the central hall of the Taj Mahal – now that’s more like it. It was never meant to change anything for _real_ , though, I’m fairly sure of it.”

“So what went wrong?” Andy asked.

“I haven’t got the faintest idea,” McAllister admitted.

“The Rift,” Tosh said suddenly. “It must have interacted with Rift energy somehow.”

“The Rift has been quiet for _weeks_ ,” Jack reminded her.

“Yup, but a low-level emanation of Rift energy is always there,” Tosh replied. “We can’t know for sure how it influences the working of all those alien artefacts we keep here. That’s why we rarely use them; not unless we can be absolutely sure that they’re safe.”

“There is another possibility,” Ianto turned to their visitor. “Sir Archibald…”

“Archie, lass, just Archie,” the man beamed at him.

“Careful, Archie, he’s normally a guy,” Jack warned him. “ _And_ he is taken already.”

“ _Everyone_ is taken – or will be – when you’re around, Jack,” McAllister retorted; then he turned back to Ianto. “You had a question, love?”

“I wanted to know how the artefact is properly activated,” Ianto said.

“There’s a switch on the highest point of the arch, right where the pendant is attached,” McAllister explained. “You touch it, just a light touch, and the artefact begins changing shape, until it looks like a desk lamp. From that point on, the thing reacts to human brainwaves, like much of Chulan technology. You have to give it a detailed description to get the results you want, though.”

“So, if someone grabbed the pendant, the artefact wouldn’t have reacted properly, would it?” Ianto concluded and shake his head in exasperation. “Trust Gwen to break something that has worked perfectly for decades.”

“Add the interference of Rift energy, and we have the perfect disaster at our hands,” Tosh added.

“Okay,” Jack said. “We know what happened, how and why. The only remaining question is: how do we reverse the effects? Archie, can you show us how to switch off the damn thing?”

“Sure,” McAllister replied, “but I cannae promise that it will do the trick. As I said, the artefact wasnae meant to make _real_ changes.”

“And yet it apparently has, this time,” Tosh said. McAllister nodded.

“My point exactly. If it’s broken, or in any other way changed, switching it off wouldnae undo anything.”

“Well, we’ll never know until we try it,” Jack said. “Let’s go and _give_ it a try.”

“I can bring the artefact here,” Ianto offered, but McAllister shook his head.

“No, lassie, I wouldnae suggest that. If the thing truly reacts to Rift energy, what, do you image, would it do in close proximity to the Rift manipulator? No, it’s better we go over to… well, wherever it is at the moment.”

“It’s right over here, in the storage room,” Ianto went forth to show the way, Jack and the eccentric Scotsman in tow.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
The other three, being left tot heir own devices, exchanged baffled looks.

“And I thought Torchwood bosses couldn’t get any weirder than Jack,” Owen commented with an eyeroll. “By the way, Tosh, where do you know the bloke from? He’s seriously creepy.”

“I find him cute,” Tosh replied mildly. “I met him at a security conference organized by UNIT, almost two years ago. He’s not as old-fashioned as he might look – and he’s one hell of a hacker.”

“He has to be, if he’s managed to hack into our communications with UNIT,” Owen said.

Tosh shook her head. “That would have been the easy part, actually. He’s a Torchwood leader; he automatically has the security clearance to our comm channels. I’m more impressed by the fact that he apparently managed to get the artefact working.”

“Well, he must be versatile if he runs Torchwood Glasgow all on his lonesome,” Andy said; then he looked at Owen. “So, has your DNA analysis led to any useful results, or are we still totally clueless?”

“To be honest, the results only make everything worse,” Owen admitted, re-checking them on his screen, unaware of the fact that Andy was checking out his butt in the jeans that were stretched just a tad too tightly over his now decidedly feminine curves.

Tosh, however, did notice it, and elbowed Andy in the ribs. Hard.

“What do you mean?” she asked, ignoring Andy’s painful attempts to breathe.

Owen scratched his head. It was a familiar gesture, one Tosh had seen hundreds of times, yet strangely mismatched with his current looks.

“Well, no matter how I look at them, he DNA is identical with the samples we had in storage from our former selves,” he explained. “We are still one hundred per cent… well, _we_ , and so is Andy, compared with the personal data you’ve… erm… _borrowed_ from his police file. Even Gwen is one hundred per cent Gwen, unlikely as it might seem.”

“How did you manage to take a sample from her?” Tosh asked in surprise.

“It wasn’t me, it was Teaboy,” Owen admitted. “Apparently, Gwen is not only snoring like a chainsaw, she’s also drooling in her sleep. But yeah, her DNA is completely unchanged, and so is ours.”

“But that’s impossible!” Tosh said. “Even if Archie’s right, and the main purpose of the artefact is to create illusions, we not only _look_ different. Our bodies _feel_ different, too, and are no longer working the way they used to.”

“Thanks for pointing out the glaringly obvious, Tosh,” Owen replied snidely. “It’s not as if I’d been able to sleep at all with these… _things_ in the way whenever I tried to roll onto my stomach,” he made a disgusted gesture, as if he wanted to brush breadcrumbs from his breasts. “Don’t you think I might have noticed that I’m not a guy anymore?”

“You don’t need to be so rude,” Andy reproved him. “She’s only trying to help – to help us all. It’s not easy, for any of us, you know. You aint’t the only bloke with a problem here.”

“You’re an easy one to talk,” Owen muttered. “At least you’ve still got your dick. _And_ you look a lot better than before.”

Andy gave him an offended look. “I’d like you to know that I actually _liked_ my former looks. And I preferred to be a head taller, thank you very much.”

“Yeah, sure,” Owen scowled, but Tosh interrupted him.

“I liked Andy’s former looks, too. He looked _cute_. But that’s not the issue right now. What do you think is the reason that we _have_ changed, while our DNA hasn’t?”

“I don’t know!” Owen threw his hands in the air in frustration. “I haven’t got a fucking clue, all right? It’s not something I’d ever heard of before.”

“Based on what this Archie bloke said, it shouldn’t have happened,” Andy said thoughtfully. “I must say, for an illusion it’s a bloody convincing one.”

“It _must_ be the Rift,” Tosh insisted. “There simply isn’t any other explanation.”

“The rift… and Gwen,” Owen said grimly. “I hope she remains a gnome, even if the rest of us _can_ be changed back. She’s a menace.”

“I didn’t hear you complain whenever she jumped your bones during the last year,” Tosh replied tersely. “So I suggest you just shut up and suck up, even though now she’s done something you _don’t_ happen to enjoy,” she gave him a dark, sarcastic smile. “I’d also suggest that you take it like a man, but considering your blatant lack of manliness at the moment it would be a moot point, wouldn’t it?”

She paused, letting the impact of her words sink in. If Owen’s suddenly very pale face was any indication, it had. Andy, on the other hand, was staring at her in naked admiration – and that had _nothing_ to do with her current looks.

“Man,” the young constable breathed, “you’re amazing. I knew you were smart, but I never thought you’d have such a sharp bite. I can’t wait for you to become a girl again.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
In the meantime, Archie McAllister was examining the alien ‘desk lamp’ carefully.

“Is this what it’s supposed to look like when activated?” Jack asked.

McAllister nodded. “Aye. The golden gleam in the cartouches indicates that it’s in ready mode. If the blue light in the upper part begins to fluctuate, it means that the dream lamp is actively working.”

“ _Dream lamp_?” Ianto echoed with interest. He had a thing for cool names. McAllister shrugged.

“That’s what I used to call it. Wasnae big on catalogue numbers, ever. Besides, it’s what it does – makes your dreams come true… for a little while anyway.”

“Catchy,” Ianto admitted. “However, I can’t remember ever having dreamt about becoming a blonde bimbo.”

“You could have done worse,” Jack commented, waggling his eyebrows suggestively.

McAllister gave him a tired look. “Jack. Can you stop the mating dance for a moment? I’m trying to concentrate here; see if I can connect with the lamp again.”

“Sure,” Jack tried to look contrite. “Go on. Chulan technology is supposed to be semi-sentient, after all.”

“Aye, but only the more sophisticated pieces; the ones equipped with artificial intelligence,” Archie replied. “The rest of it is simply adjusted to react to human brainwaves… well, to _sentient_ brainwaves in general.”

“That would explain how Gwen’s managed to break it,” Ianto murmured, audible only for Jack’s ears. Jack rolled his eyes but couldn’t suppress a grin.

“Both user and tech need a certain time to accommodate,” McAllister continued, unaware of the little interlude. “To become fully compatible.” 

“Yeah,” Jack nodded. “It was like that with my ship, too. Even though it _had_ an artificial intelligence installed in the board computer.”

“Well, the people of Chula aren’t entirely humanoid, so I’m told,” McAllister shrugged. “So, it’s not surprising that their tech needs to get used to work for other species. However,” and he was laying his hands on the upper part of the artefact now, “this seems to store human brainwave patterns somehow, so in theory, the lamp should be able to recognise me.”

He closed his eyes and concentrated. The blue light within the artefact pulsed for a moment, and the thing emanated a low, melodious hum, as if greeting him. After a few short moments, though, the light show collapsed unto itself, and the inside of the ‘lamp’ suddenly turned to a dull grey.

McAllister opened his eyes, his expression that of sorrow and loss.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Whatever your co-worker has done with the lamp, it’s broken now. It has just spent the last spark of its stored energy. There’s nothing I can do.” He shook his head. “And it was such a bonny little thing.”

“Forget the lamp, what about us?” Jack asked. “Does this mean we’re gonna remain in these bodies for the rest of our lives?”

“I’m sorry, Jack, I truly am,” McAllister replied. “I so hoped I can make the lamp reverse whatever it’s done to you, and would it be still a-working, I might even have succeeded. But I cannae work with a broken tool, and I havnae got a clue how to fix it.”

“Fantastic, just fucking fantastic!” Jack growled.

“Jack?” Ianto said quietly. “I think you'll have to call in a _really_ big favour this time.”

Jack looked at him with a clueless frown.

“I mean,” Ianto clarified, “that we perhaps need the help of a doctor… the _right kind_ of Doctor, as you like to phrase it.”

For a moment, Jack just stared at him in a stunned silence. Then he broke into a huge, ear to ear grin, fished his cell phone out of the pocket of his suit jacket and hit the speed dial.

“Martha? Listen to me; I need you to make another phone call on my behalf… Yeah, a very _specific_ phone call.”


	7. Screw It All, We Need A Doctor Here!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Personally, I prefer Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor. Perhaps it’s an age-related thing. But given canon timeline, I had to go for the Tenth Doctor here, so the special guest appearance goes to David Tennant. Applause, please!
> 
> And yeah, I know the technobabble is rubbish. It isn’t meant to be taken seriously, either.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
 **PART SEVEN: SCREW IT ALL, WE NEED A DOCTOR HERE!**

Martha, loyal soul that she was, promised to contact the Doctor as soon as she got home. Considering the adventurous meanderings of the TARDIS through space and time, however, it could take everything from ten minutes to ten years to hunt the Time Lord down, and so Jack ordered everyone to return to normal routine. Whatever they might look like at the moment, they still had a job to do, and since they had Andy (officially still on sick leave) instead of Gwen the Gnome, they even had the usual numbers.

It wasn’t that any of his fellow policemen would recognize Andy in his current form anyway.

Fortunately, the effect that had turned Janet into a petrified Gargoyle seemed to have worked for the rest of the Weevils as well. Reports about stone monsters in the sewers kept flooding in, of course. A slightly obsessed archaeologist even came up with the theory that in prehistoric times there had to be a mystic cult centre in the place of Cardiff, housing a previously unknown civilization.

Speculations soon escalated well beyond the merely ridiculous. Ianto had a hard time to remove all true evidence from the news channels and the internet. Even so, private shots kept popping up constantly. Digital cameras and mobile phones with photographic function could be a pest sometimes.

“I suggest lacing the city’ water supplies with Retcon, once it’s over,” he said, rubbing his burning eyes. “What still slips through, we can always blame on mass hysteria and psychedelic drugs.”

“That usually works,” Tosh agreed. “Too bad that, for some reason, UNIT seems to have a problem with it.”

“Just let’s hope this won’t take too long, or things can really get out of control,” Jack answered tiredly. “I don’t know how long I’ll be able to feed Rhys halfway convincing lies; despite what Gwen seems to think about him, the man isn’t a fool. Love’s fool, perhaps, but not an idiot. I’m running out of excuses why he can’t even speak to her.”

“He’ll need a massive dosis of that Retcon stuff when this is over,” Andy agreed. “Has been complaining about Gwen’s new job ever since she joined you lot.”

“I’d gladly take him out of your hands,” Ianto said to Jack apologetically, “but it’s unlikely he’d buy the story that I’ve suddenly turned into a woman. A shame, actually; I get along with him well enough.”

“He’s a nice bloke,” Andy said. “He’d deserve better, but he seems to be completely blind when it comes to Gwen.”

“I can handle him,” Jack sighed. “It’s just… I’ve gotten so used to remain young and agile all the time – this older body is making me so ridiculously tired.”

Ianto gave him a thoughtful look. “Jack, the thought’s just occurred to me… What if it isn’t just the body? What if the changes have made you mortal again?”

The mere idea of it obviously shocked Jack a great deal. He might bemoan his inability to die – a fact even Andy had come to terms with during the previous days – the curse of having friends, family and loved ones die around him on a regular basis, and that was a harsh fate indeed. On the other hand, the knowledge that he didn’t have to push others into the firing line since _he_ could afford to die many deaths and come back again, unharmed, was like a drug.

Not the dying part – that was painful every time, and the coming back alive an unpleasant process – but one could get addicted to it nonetheless. Plus, it was sort of a safety net for those he felt responsible for. Re-adjusting to being mortal, and an older, much more vulnerable mortal at that, was a positively frightening perspective.

“God, I hope not!” he blurted out without thinking.

Ianto’s pretty eyes darkened a little at this reaction. “Why not?” he asked. “Wasn’t it you who told me over and over again how much you wanted to be able to live out your life in the normal way?”

Jack glared at him incredulously. “Are you kidding? In _this_ body?”

The honest despair in his voice made Ianto laugh. “You’re _so_ vain,” he said. “As if it would matter to me. It would be still _you_.”

“No, it wouldn’t,” Jack replied glumly. “The ability to take great risks and come back unharmed is part of what makes me the person I am. That keeps Torchwood running. Elderly, mortal and crippled I’m of no use for Torchwood. I’d be a liability. I could get you – _all_ of you – killed, just because I’m no longer my immortal self.”

“What makes you think you can’t get us all killed one day as your old self?” Ianto asked reasonably. “This is Torchwood, Jack, and we all know what the life expectations of a Torchwood employee are, especially here, at the Rift. You can’t shield us from everything.”

“I can try,” Jack answered simply. “Besides, as hot as I find you in this shape, I want my Ianto back. Even if it means that I’ll have to lose you one day.”

“I’d like to have you back, too,” Ianto leaned in and kissed him briefly. “Although you still taste like yourself.”

“Oi, you two!” Owen complained. “Stop it or get a room! I hope that Doctor of yours is gonna show up, soon, cos there’s only so much necking between the two of you that I can take on any given day.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
But it took another two days before the characteristic wheezing and groaning noise of the TARDIS’ landing filled the Hub and the old-fashioned blue police box materialised in the middle of the main area, causing a miniature whirlwind that blew every unfastened piece of paper flow from its place, to Ianto’s great dismay. He’d have to be _very_ quick to save potentially important documents from the cleaning-up frenzy of the changed Myfanwy, who seemed to have developed an appetite for paper.

For a moment, the blue relic just stood there, doing nothing. Then the door swung open, and out hopped a loose-limbed man in a brown suit, with hair so tousled as if he’d been outside the TARDIS when it landed, and a thin, animated, almost manic face. He peered around over his old-fashioned, bone-rimmed glasses, as if he wasn’t quite sure where he was. Then he spotted the Torchwood logo on one of the walls and broke into a wide grin.

“So, _this_ is Torchwood Three,” he said. “Quite spectacular, I must say… in a manner. Where’s Jack?”

“Standing in the door of that office upstairs and staring down at you like a kid in a candy shop,” the beautiful, regal black woman following him out of the TARDIS replied.

The Doctor – beacuse who else could he have been? – looked up at the ‘new and improved’ Jack… and promptly broke down in a series of hysterical giggles.

“Oh, my word!” he wheezed. “When you told me you’ve found a grey hair a few months ago, I didn’t believe the aging process would be quite so fast. In the end, there _will_ be some truth in the Face of Boe myth, after all!”

And he fell into another series of giggles. Jack shook his head in exasperation.

“You know,” he said to Martha sourly, “I think I definitely liked the previous regeneration better. It wasn’t nearly so cheeky… and a lot more mature.”

“And you never mentioned that he had sentient hair,” Ianto commented, eyeing the unruly mass of hair covering the Time Lord’s head. “Or is this a new development?”

“Nah, I think it came ready-made with the cheek,” Jack replied.

“And with the obsession with dumb blondes,” Martha commented _sotto voce_. “You better keep an eye on _your_ collection, Jack, lest he spirits one of them away as his next companion.”

“Hey!” Jack said indignantly. “ _My_ blondes are _not_ dumb! They’re smart, feisty and reliable. Besides, they’re both guys… well, at least they used to be.”

“And would like very much to become ones again,” Ianto added with a brilliant smile.

“And _I’d_ like to turn back to a woman,” Tosh said. “And I’m sure Andy here would want to get back the several inches of height he’s lost.”

The doctor ran his hand through his _sentient hair_ as Ianto had called it.

“All right, this is really confusing,” he said. “Martha mentioned something about a reality manipulator…?”

“A Chulan one,” Jack supplied helpfully.

“A _broken_ one,” Ianto added, and the Doctor pulled an unhappy face.

“Ow! Those are tricky.”

Tosh nodded. “That’s what Archie said, too.”

“Who’s Archie?” the information overload seemed to confuse the Doctor even more.

“Sir, Archibald McAllister, a Scotsman of noble, albeit unimportant heritage and leader of Torchwood Two, currently waiting in his hotel room to be called, should he be needed,” Ianto intoned gravely; then he grinned. “However, he wanted us to call him simply Archie. A most… personable man, I’d say.”

“Ianto!” Jack warned him darkly.

Ianto batted his impossibly long eyelashes at him. “Jealous, Jack?”

“Of _Archie_?” Jack rolled his eyes. “You gotta be kidding, right?”

Ianto shrugged, causing certain parts of his recently acquired anatomy to jiggle enticingly as a result. “Why? Personally, I do find a man in a kilt hot…”

“…as long as he doesn’t wear anything under the kilt,” Jack finished for him, grinning like a loon.

“For fuck’s sake, don’t start again, you two!” Owen groaned. Then he turned to the Doctor, with his desperate plea mirroring on his lovely face. “Listen, you’re obviously the god in Jack’s private pantheon, can’t you, please, fix the fucking device before I go insane from their public mating rituals?”

“I can certainly try,” the Doctor replied, “but trust me: there’s no power in the universe – in _any_ of them, in fact – that could stop Jack Harkness when he’s on the roll. I’ve seen him in action before.”

“Me, too,” Owen said,” and I’d _really_ prefer _not_ to watch him in action again. So, can you fix it? Can you fix us?”

“I honestly don’t know,” the Doctor admitted. “I need to see the device first.”

“I’ll show you,” Jack grabbed the Time Lord’s elbow and steered him in the direction of the store room. “Ianto, do you think you could make some tea for a change? The Doctor doesn’t like coffee.”

“Tough,” Ianto replied, crossing his long legs in a manner that made the Doctor stop mid-track, since he was wearing the miniskirt today. “I’m not a teaboy.”

“ _I’ll_ make some tea,” Tosh offered. “Ianto can get the rest of you caffeinated in the meantime.”

“I want a biscuit,” Owen said petulantly. “Do we still have some of those ginger biscuits?”

“It depends,” Ianto stood and swayed to the coffee machine. “Have you raided my cupboard since Friday?”

“What?” Owen frowned. “No, I...”

“Then we do have some left,” Ianto declared. “Behave, and I might consider giving you one with your coffee.”

The doctor was still looking slack-jawed from one gorgeous blonde to the other.

“Are they always like this?” he asked.

“No,” Jack replied, “they’re usually a lot worse. Having turned into girls seems to have softened them quite a bit, actually. Come on now, we’ve got things to do.”

He had to practically drag the Time Lord out of the main Hub area.

“As I said: an obsession with blondes,” Martha commented, a little sourly.

“Luckily for us, neither of us is one in our natural state,” Ianto answered, spooning freshly ground coffee into the coffee machine. “Andy here might get problems when changed back, though.”

The panicked look Andy suddenly gave him was priceless.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
“A-ha!” the Doctor walked around the broken reality manipulator (nicknamed dream lamp by Archie McAllister) and examined it from every direction. “A nifty little thing… Chulan technology indeed, from the height of their technical revolution.”

“Can you fix it?” Jack asked impatiently.

“Fixing is the easy part – assuming you have a sonic screwdriver,” the Doctor replied absently, producing said item from the pocket of his suit jacket. “The tricky part is to recharge its energy cell; it’s completely replenished.”

“What?!” Jack couldn’t believe it. “That’s impossible! Chulan energy cells of that era were practically inexhaustible and had a built-in regenerating modus!”

“Again with the technobabble!” the Doctor scoffed. “I’ve told you repeatedly that it doesn’t turn me on, so stop wasting my time. This device could have run infinitely, carrying out his original programming: to create pleasant illusions. Changing you for real must have eaten up its last energy reserves; it’s burned out, and if I don’t find a way to recharge it, you and the others are stuck in these forms.”

“You can’t be serious!” Jack felt panic rising inside him. “Chulan energy cells are notoriously incompatible with other energy sources. Does it mean we’re screwed?”

“Not if we manage to channel Rift energy somehow and use it to recharge the batteries of the artefact,” Tosh came in and smiled apologetically. “Sorry for eavesdropping, but I thought you might need some help, Doctor.”

The Time Lord blinked at the lanky young man owlishly. “I’m sorry… do I know you?”

“Not in this form, I’m afraid,” Tosh replied, “but we’ve met before, yes. Although I find you looked better in your previous shape, too.”

“This is Toshiko Sato,” Jack explained.

Realisation dawned, and the Doctor visibly perked up. “Dr. Sato?” he jumped to his feet and shook Tosh’ hand so enthusiastically he almost dislocated her arm. “It’s good to see you again, even under such… unfortunate circumstances. I hope we can find a way to fix this problem and give you back your original self. Now, what were you saying about Rift energy?”

“Well,” Tosh shrugged, “Archie and I were thinking. If the artefact had reacted in such an unusual way to Rift energy, it might be at least partially compatible with it. So, if we had the right technology…”

“…like a sonic screwdriver…” the Doctor was getting the picture.

“… we _might_ be able to recharge the Chulan energy cell,” Tosh finished. “There are no guarantees, of course, but what do we have to lose? The artefact is dead, it’s no like we could break it any more.”

“Perhaps,” the Doctor said. “We ought to give it a try. But even if we can recharge the energy cell, it will be a tricky process to make the device reverse the changes. One mistake and we could end up in an even bigger mess than you are in right now.”

“Let’s Archie do that part,” Tosh suggested. “He’d used the artefact for years before London confiscated it. It’s already attuned to his brainwaves.”

“Hey!” Jack protested. “I’m not gonna lay my fate into the hands of Archie McAllister!”

“Fine!” Tosh snapped, her patience running out. “Keep this lovely shape you’re in right now; I’m sure Ianto wouldn’t mind. I for my part trust Archie to know what he’s doing; _and_ he’s a friend who’ll try his best to help _me_. Really, Jack, you can be such a git sometimes! Just because Archie _doesn’t_ shag everything on two legs, it doesn’t mean he’d be incompetent in his job.”

The Doctor was grinning like a maniac. “I never thought to meet a woman who wouldn’t fall for the notorious Jack Harkness charm head over heels,” he said. “She does have a point, though. We’ll need someone who’s already familiar with the artefact. _And_ I’ll need the exact energy readings from the Rift at the time all this happened,” he turned to Tosh, who nodded.

“Of course, Doctor. “I’ve developed a programme that monitors the Rift seven-twenty-four and documents the energy fluctuations all the time. CCTV footage will provide us with the exact time slot. It shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll go and call Archie now. He’ll be thrilled to meet you; and to be able to help.”

For a moment, the Doctor looked after her in amazement.

“She’s truly brilliant, are you aware of that?” he asked Jack. “In fact, she’s actually wasted here. With her abilities…”

“She’d be even more wasted rotting in a UNIT prison,” Jack pointed out.

“True enough,” the Doctor said, “though I think I could do something about _that_. I do have some small influence within UNIT, as you know.”

“You’re here to do something about our current situation, not to deprive me of my only scientist,” Jack pointed out.

“I know,” the Doctor paused. “Jack… there’s another thing. I’m not sure you’ve realised it, but… in this form, you’ve become mortal again. Did you know that?”

“Ianto’s already pointed out the possibility,” Jack answered slowly. “But somehow I didn’t feel like putting the theory to test.”

“Well, yeah, I can see why,” the Doctor paused again, and then asked carefully. “Are you sure you truly want to reverse the changes? You’ve always wanted to get rid of your immortality; to get _fixed_ , as you’ve put it. This would be your chance, you know.”

“My chance for what?” Jack asked bitterly. “To become a burden for my team and my…” he couldn’t find the right word to express what Ianto was for him. “To chain a young lover to me and have him watch me grow old and feeble in a couple of decades, wasting his life with me out of misplaced loyalty?”

“Why would it be misplaced?” the Doctor asked gently. “People do such things all the time. It’s only _human_ , Jack, and so are you.”

“Not human _enough_ it seems; not anymore,” Jack replied, and the Doctor rolled his eyes in mock exasperation.

“Developed quite the god complex, haven’t you?”

Jack gave him a look that could have cut security glass. “Well, I’ve learned from the best.”

“Are we warming up old grudges again?” the Doctor asked, a little indignantly. “I’ve explained you – _repeatedly_ – what’s happened and why.”

“And that’s supposed to make leaving me behind on some exploding satellite _right_?” Jack asked. “You owe me, Doctor. I’ve died a thousand deaths for you – is it asking so much that you fix my life, just this one fucking time?”

“I can’t _fix_ your life,” the Doctor said tiredly. “I can try turning you back into the immortal Jack Harkness you used to be a few days ago, or I can leave you as you’re now and you can have a normal life – as long as it lasts and as far as it’s possible while you still are with Torchwood. It’s either the one or the other. I’m sorry, but the way things are, you can’t have both.”

“Well, that sucks,” Jack said sourly. “But if I have to choose, I’d prefer to be myself again and live with the consequences.”


	8. Everything Changes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> According to online sources, the very first scene filmed with Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor was the one with Toshiko (called Dr. Sato) in the episode “Aliens of London”. And yeah, I know the technobabble is still rubbish. It isn’t meant to be taken seriously, either.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
 **PART EIGHT: EVERYTHING CHANGES**

The following days proved… interesting, to put it mildly. Like a Chinese curse. The Doctor, Jack and Tosh – with the enthusiastic help of Archie McAllister, who was indeed thrilled to meet Torchwood’s arch enemy – worked round the clock to somehow funnel some Rift energy into the “batteries” of the artefact, but it proved far more difficult than any of them might have expected.

At least they were making _some_ progress, as Tosh explained them on the third evening. They were all sitting in the main Hub area, eating takeaway pizza and feeding the boxes to the now-tentacled Myfanwy. The pterodactyl-turned-bizarre-green-monster was sitting on the floor next to Ianto, wrapping one tentacle tenderly around his ankle while stuffing rubbish into its maw with the other seven, munching happily.

It was a disturbingly… domestic scene, Jack found. Well, as long as it didn’t escalate into tentacle sex, he was willing to tolerate it.

In the meantime, Gwen the Gnome woke up, of course, and threw a spectacular temper tantrum in her cell. Fortunately, Martha came up with the idea of flooding the cell with sleeping gas, or else he’d have woken up Janet the petrified Gargoyle in the next one. Which, as Owen warned them, would have been a very bad thing, as Gargoyles functioned as a hive mind – at least in some of the wackier online computer games he liked to play – and all the stone monsters in the sewers could have come alive, too.

“It’s not just us,” the pretty doctor explained to Andy, with whom he seemed to have come to a truce in the recent days. “The whole fucking city is at risk. If those monsters wake up before we could turn them back into Weevils… well, it’s not a pleasant thought.”

“Don’t worry, sweetheart,” Andy patted his knee encouragingly. “I’m sure Toshiko and the others will solve the problem, soon.”

Considering that Owen was wearing an elegant, dark grey suit with a skirt today – he seemed to be getting a knack on feminine fashion lately – everyone stiffened, expecting him to break Andy’s arm, at the very least, for pawing him. To general surprise, nothing in the kind happened, which sent Ianto’s suspicious mind into overdrive with speculation. Owen _liked_ to have sex, after all. And if the price for getting some was to… _experiment_ with his no-longer-so-hidden inner woman – well, he was known to have shagged guys before. Not too often, but he had.

“Well, I hope they do,” Ianto replied to Andy, absently petting the green octopus currently hugging his leg. “Although I must admit I’ll miss Myfanwy like this. She’s so affectionate – and she does all the cleaning up for me.”

That he was sorely tempted to do some… _experimenting_ with his own inner woman was not something he felt the urge to share with the others.

“You’re sick, Ianto,” Owen declared. “Jack has been a bad, bad influence on you.”

“Depends on your definition of _bad_ ,” Ianto replied with a rather un-ladylike grin. “I don’t mind his… _influence_ at all. Or wouldn’t, were he his old self again.”

“Please!” Owen closed those lovely, doe-like eyes of his in pain. “I don’t want to know, okay? Never did, never would. Just… just keep your bedroom secrets well-hidden.”

The Doctor, who was quietly listening to them, had become beet red by then. For such an ancient, immortal being, he was surprisingly easily embarrassed. At least the current regeneration of his was. He coughed into his teacup discretely.

“Well, I don’t want to inspire any unfounded hopes,” he said, “but we’re close to solving the problem. The help of Dr. Sato proved invaluable, but that’s not really surprising. She’s always been very competent.”

“Where do you know Tosh anyway?” Owen asked.

“Oh, we’ve met back in 2006, in London, during the Slitheen invasion,” the Doctor replied airily. “I mean, she and the _previous_ me. If I’m not mistaken, she was filling in for you in the morgue, abducting that space pig. You know, the one _you_ were supposed to do the autopsy on.”

“Only that he was having the mother of all hangovers,” Tosh added with a sickeningly sweet smile. “I’ve known the Doctor for years. Longer than Jack, in fact.”

“I thought Jack met the Doctor back during the Blitz,” Ianto said, a little confused.

“True, but in linear time, my previous self met Dr. Sato earlier than Jack,” the Doctor explained. “Timey-wimey… when you’re a time traveller, things can get a little… complicated sometimes.” He looked at Tosh with a speculative eye. “You know, if we manage to solve this little problem, you could come with me. See the universe… past and future… have an adventure or two…”

Tosh shot Jack’s impassive face a quick glance. “I don’t think that would be possible right now. My… _contract_ with Torchwood hasn’t run off yet.”

The wordless exchange didn’t remain unnoticed by the Doctor.

“Oh, I’m sure we can arrange something,” he said brightly. “Can’t we, Jack? Extended leave, perhaps? A field mission or two?”

“What’s up with you, Doctor?” Martha asked in fake surprise. “Have sworn off of dumb blondes, all of the sudden?”

The Time Lord shrugged. “Well, you won’t come back, would you? And I find I’ve come to appreciate intelligence in a lady.”

“Can we concentrate on solving the actual problem first?” Jack asked. “We’ll negotiate about the chance of me letting Tosh go with you, okay?”

“Speaking of which,” Andy said, “exactly how close _are_ you to solving it?”

“It’s not that simple,” McAllister sighed. “We’ve already figured out how to make the recharging process work. But the energy cell has been damaged – it experienced a near-critical overload, in fact – so it won’t be able to absorb enough energy from the Rift to change all of you back at the same time.”

“Meaning?” Andy clearly wasn’t following the technobabble, and who could blame him? He was just a beat cop.

“Meaning that you’ll have to spend some quality time with the _dream lamp_ , each and every one of you,” McAllister explained. “Beyond that, the energy cell would be depleted after a while… presumably before everyone wouldae had their turn.”

“Well, that’s… not so good,” Ianto, the master of understatement, commented.

“Nah,” McAllister agreed. “And the worst part is: we only can recharge the energy cell once. The second group will have to wait at least six months, until the _lamp_ slowly recharges itself.”

“Which means you’ll have to make choices,” the Doctor added. “You’ll have to consider who needs to be changed back immediately and who’ll have to wait for my next visit.”

“You mean you’re gonna come back in six months?” Jack asked.

The Doctor gave him a droll look. “You don’t really think I’d leave my sonic screwdriver here with you, do you?”

Jack shrugged. “Well, a guy has to try, hasn’t he? In any case, I’d say Gwen needs to be changed back first, so that we can hand her back to Rhys – for good.”

“And Janet with her,” Ianto added. “We can’t risk the Gargoyles waking up and going on a rampant killing spree all over Cardiff. If we take the artefact down to the cells, the others will be shielded from the effects, at least partially. The cells have been _built_ to contain alien threats, after all.”

“Jack must be among the first to be changed back, too,” McAllister said. Jack tried to protest, but the Scotsman wasn’t having any of it. “No, Jack, it has to be. Be reasonable. You’re the leader of the only fully functioning Torchwood branch right now – the _de facto_ head of our whole organization. You have to deal with UNIT and the Prime Minister on a regular basis; even with the Queen occasionally. You _need_ to be yourself.”

“And so does Andy,” Tosh said.

Andy shook his head. “No, no, ladies first.”

“But you can’t stay someone else for half a year,” Jack reminded him. “What about your job? The police won’t believe you.”

Andy shrugged. “I thought you were gonna hire me.”

“Well… yes, I planned to,” Jack was a bit taken aback by his directness. “I just didn’t expect you to be still willing, now that you’ve seen what Torchwood is all about.”

“It’s not easy to swallow,” Andy admitted. “But I think I’d be bored to death if I went back walking the beat again… and I could be more useful here.”

“True enough,” Jack agreed. “Now that we’re rid of Gwen, we’ve got an opening anyway. And if Tosh goes away with the Doctor – which can last a while – we’ll need even more staff… not that _anyone_ could replace her where computers are concerned.”

Tosh stared at him with astonished puppy dog eyes. Her current shape made it easy to do the puppy-eyed routine.

“You’ll let me go?” she whispered in stunned disbelief.

Jack raised a forefinger warningly. “Not for good, mind you. It’s… well, a loan. For the six months the artefact needs for recharging. After that, I expect you to come back and bring your… _contract_ to the end.”

“And when she’s done it?” the Doctor asked. “Can I have her back then?”

“That,” Jack grinned, “will be a matter of different negotiations. You’ll have to work it out with her yourself.”

“But who’ll do my work while I’m away?” Tosh asked worriedly. Jack shrugged.

“I’m sure Ianto and I can manage between us… for a while anyway. You’ve taught him a lot. We’ll have to hire someone temporarily for the tourist office, of course, but if we keep Myfanwy the way she’s now, cleaning the Hub won’t be a problem and Ianto would have more time for the really important stuff.”

“All right,” the Doctor rubbed his hands gleefully. “Let’s see then if we can get the artefact working again. I’d suggest that only Jack and Toshiko come down to the cells with us, so that both Archie and the manipulator can… well, _focus_.”

“Oi!” Owen protested. “What about me?”

“I’m sorry, Owen, but you’ll have to wait to get your dick back for a while yet,” Jack answered. “And so will Ianto, I’m afraid.”

Ianto didn’t seem to be particularly concerned. “As long as I _get_ turned back, I won’t mind… _experimenting_ a little,” he said, giving Jack an X-rated smile. It was enough to get the older man hot and bothered, even with his current, considerably limited libido. “It seems to work for Owen, so what the hell...?”

“Erm… right,” Jack said, ignoring Owen’s indignant spluttering. “Well, if you’re all done with the pizza, let’s go down to the cells and do this.”

“Fortunately, we have CCTV surveillance in the cells,” Ianto peeled Myfanwy off his ankle and swayed over to the surveillance monitor. “Popcorn anyone?”

He didn’t get any answer. All men present were staring at his pretty arse in the sinfully tight miniskirt – including Owen, who, technically, wasn’t even a man right now. Martha giggled hysterically at the sight of such testosterone overload.

“Ianto, stop wiggling your backside at them before they start a fight over you,” she said when she could breathe again. “And you, guys, get your act together; or do you want to abandon the entire project for Ianto’s arse?”

Jack snapped out of it (admittedly with some difficulty), grinned at her and saluted.

“Ma’am, yes, ma’am!” he replied in a crisp military manner and marched out of the door.

Recovering from their slightly dazzled state, the Doctor and Archie McAllister followed suit. Tosh did the same, sharing an eyeroll with Martha on her way out.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
The others made themselves comfortable on the couch, from where they could all see the surveillance monitor well. Ianto distributed coffee and popcorn, and then arranged his long, graceful limbs in the most enticing manner, allowing Myfanwy to wrap her tentacles around his leg again. Even a green octopus needed love, after all; and Myfanwy had worked hard enough lately to deserve a little affection.

“All right,” he said brightly, “we’re ready here, Jack, you can start.”

“This gonna be better than prime time BBC,” Owen commented, stuffing his face with popcorn in a most un-ladylike manner.

“Don’t distract them,” Andy chided the others, wriggling closer to Owen than it was humanly possible. “We don’t want them lose focus, do we?”

Ianto tried to look contrite – and failed. The gender-swap had brought out a playful side of him; a side nobody would have expected of him. All of a sudden, he found so many things amusing it surprised even him.

In the meantime Jack and McAllister had positioned the reality manipulator in front of Gwen’s cell. The Doctor watched them impatiently, rolling back and forth on the balls of his feet, sonic screwdriver on the ready.

“We’ve reached maximum charge,” Tosh said, checking things on her computer tablet. “Now or never, Archie… Doctor…”

Archie placed his hands on the upper section of the _dream lamp_ , closed his eyes and concentrated. The Doctor pointed the sonic screwdriver at the thing and activated it. Everyone waited anxiously for the results; Owen stopped chewing his popcorn… and almost his breathing, too.

For a moment, nothing happened, and Jack began to despair. But then, the ‘stem’ of the lamp began to glow in a soft golden hue, and another moment later a vibrant blue light filled the upper part, pulsing lightly. Now everything depended on Archie, and the Scotsman was chalk white and sweating with the mental effort to bend the faulty instrument to his will again.

The blue light became stronger and brighter, filling the narrow space in front of the cells. Hit by it, Jack and Tosh collapsed on the floor, writhing in pain. The outlines of their bodies became fluid, like those of an amoeba. The same happened to Gwen the Gnome, while Janet the Gargoyle seemed to shatter to pieces and then turn into a puddle of greenish goo on the cell floor.

“Ouch!” Andy commented. “Seems painful, doesn’t it? So that’s why we all woke up hurting like hell!”

Martha nodded. “Human bodies weren’t meant to go through any kind of metamorphosis; it’s quite a strain on one’s system. Let’s hope this is the last time any of you have to suffer it.”

The blue light thickened to a blue-grey mist down at the cells, so that they couldn’t see a thing for a while. Then the fog dissipated, and they could see Jack, greatcoat and all, lying on the floor, apparently unconscious. The Doctor was supporting Tosh – pretty, female and petite as ever – into a sitting position, as she couldn’t do it on her own yet.

Janet, back to her usual charming self, was howling in the farthest corner of her cell, and even Gwen seemed to be her old self again.

Whether _that_ was a good thing or a bad thing, of course, was up to debate.

Archie, too, sat on the floor, slumped against the wall, breathing heavily. The artefact was grey and dead once again. They could only hope that it hadn’t burned out beyond the chance of one last recharging.

“Come,” Martha said to Owen. “By the sight of it, everyone but the Doctor is in shock. They’ll need medical assistance down there.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
In the end, it took almost two days for everyone to recover. Jack used the time to talk with Rhys, explaining him that Gwen had suffered a head trauma and lost her memory due to an unfortunate accident of her own doing.

“She wouldn’t remember working for Torchwood at all,” he added, “and there’s no way to know just yet how far back the amnesia goes, although our doctors estimate it to be about two years or so.”

He also suggested that Rhys would do better if he moved with her to another town.

“Torchwood will provide the financial means for the move,” he explained.

Rhys was so happy with the arrangement – he’d always hated Gwen’s secretive new job that ruined their private life; plus he was all too eager to remove Gwen from Jack’s proximity – that they didn’t even have to Retcon him. Which made things a lot less complicated. He’d keep Gwen away from people and places that could trigger her memories, and they’d live happily ever after somewhere else. Preferably far, far away.

Andy asked for a transfer to Torchwood, and – thanks to the help of one Detective Inspector Henderson who could never deny Jack anything – he got it, taking over Gwen’s place. Tosh and Martha left with the Doctor, promising that they’ll be all back in six months to help the rest of the team get back to their true selves. Archie returned to Glasgow but would also be back in half a year’s time.

Reports of the strange stone monsters having vanished from the sewers kept Cardiff all excited for the next couple of weeks. The archaeologist, having seen himself on the ruins of his potentially sensational discovery, suffered a nervous breakdown and was now treated in a mental institute. Other than that, things returned to normal.

The dry cleaner’s was a tourist office again, much to Ianto’s relief, who was now promoted to tech girl, although he shared those duties with Jack. As foreseen, even their combined efforts weren’t enough to even come close to Tosh’ usual efficiency, though. She was a genius, after all, and sometimes Jack regretted allowing her to go with the Doctor, even for such a limited time.

At other times he did not. Tosh deserved to have an adventure and to see the wonders of the universe. Besides, in her absence Jack could pretend to have to work late with Ianto. Not that either Owen or Andy would buy it, but that wasn’t the point. _Trying_ to come up with halfway convincing excuses to stay alone with Ianto and shag him on every available surface within the Hub was part of the fun.

“You know,” he said after a particularly energetic exercise in the hothouse, “we really need to find a part-time receptionist. At this rate, we’ll be both run ragged within weeks, even though Myfanwy takes care of the rubbish.”

“Promises, promises,” Ianto replied airily and followed him into the shower.


	9. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I thought if the story’s over, it could at least go out with a bang. ;) I've never in my life finished a story quite this quickly.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
 **EPILOGUE**

Six months later the artefact was recharged and as ready as it would ever be. Both the Doctor and Archie McAllister got messages from Jack, though, to wait with their return until further notice. There was no detail, no explanation. So – following Tosh’ suggestion – the Doctor called Martha, who in turn called her older sister Tish, who was recently working as a part-time receptionist for Torchwood Three, and so they all figured out the reason in no time.

Ianto was pregnant.

While he and Jack generally practiced safer sex, a minor accident had happened during one of their more… _energetic_ sessions, and Ianto got knocked up. After the first shock, they decided to keep the baby and cajoled Ianto’s sister Rhiannon to raise it alongside her own two kids. Torchwood was _not_ the place to raise a baby, after all.

They hadn’t told Rhiannon the whole truth, of course – not that she’d ever believe it. She thought that “Alice” was a surrogate mother who carried the baby to term for Jack and Ianto for money, while Ianto’s apparent absence was explained by telling her that her brother was temporarily reassigned to Glasgow to help cleaning up the archives there.

This meant, however, that Ianto couldn’t be changed back just yet; no-one could tell what would become of the baby, not even the Doctor. So they had to wait. _All of them_ had to wait, as they couldn’t hope to make the artefact work for a _third_ time. Even the second chance was more than a little doubtful.

Andy wasn’t particularly bothered by that – he was essentially living the same life he’d be living in his true form – but Owen was livid.

“So, I’m gonna have tits for _another_ three months at the very least, just because you were both too horny to use condoms that would actually work?” he fumed. “And if it wasn’t bad enough, I’ll have to play midwife to Teaboy, too?”

“Sue me,” Jack replied flatly. “ _If_ you find a court that would believe your hair-raising story, that is. I’ll visit you in the psychiatric hospital then.”

There was a very serious, almost threatening undertone in his voice, and Owen knew well Jack well enough _not_ to overstrain his patience. So he shut up, but was not happy about the fact that he’d have to remain a woman longer than originally expected. The novelty of it had long worn out – including his torrid affair with Andy – and he was eager to be the predator again.

At the moment, however, he couldn’t do a thing to speed events up a little.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
The birth of Baby Alice (named after Ianto’s female alter ego) was a somewhat hysterical affair. As Alice Cramer didn’t actually exist (not in Cardiff anyway, and they couldn’t really pretend that the original Alice was visiting the UK just to get a baby), Ianto had to go to Glasgow where Archie McAllister had excellent contacts to the Royal Hospital. Jack went with him, of course, leaving the Hub in Owen’s graceful hands, praying that the Rift would behave, because Owen and PMS were a rather volatile mix.

So Baby Alice was born to Ianto Jones and Jack Harkness in Glasgow, and her birth certificate named two fathers and a certain Alice Cramer as her mother, of whom no further data were available. Archie took care of all the necessary details and was nominated as the godfather of the baby. She was a pretty little thing, with the bright blue eyes of both her fathers and Ianto’s button-like nose, which looked very cute in the middle of her tiny face.

Martha, who’d come to help delivering the baby, warned them _not_ to undergo the gender reversal until Ianto had completely recovered from giving birth, though.

“You need to be fully healed in the inside,” she warned him. “The metamorphosis puts a great stress on the human body, there’s no way to tell what it would do to you in your current state. Besides, it’s better for the baby if she gets breast-fed, at least for the first couple of months.”

For the rest of his life, Ianto Jones would adamantly deny that he’d passed out from the mere idea of breast feeding.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
Nonetheless, that was the way to go, and it took another four months until Martha declared Ianto fit to be changed back and the baby to be weaned and separated from her mother. Once again, the Doctor and Archie were called to give the artefact one last try. Tosh, too, came with the Doctor, excited about all the wonders she’d seen on her great adventure, but happy to be back.

“Now that there is no Suzie to creep me out and no Gwen to get on my nerves, it could be actually nice to continue my work here,” she said to Ianto. “It’s just a shame that there won’t be any more girls, what with Tish leaving again. Are you sure you don’t want to stay the way you’re now? You know we can’t guarantee a lucky outcome. Not with one hundred per cent certainty.”

“I know, Tosh,” Ianto replied, “but I’m willing to take the risk. Being a woman was a fun experience – well, not the pregnant part of it, or the giving birth part of it, obviously – but I want to be myself again. Being the humble archivist might be less spectacular, but that’s what I was always _meant_ to be. Not Wonder Woman.”

Tosh nodded in understanding. “Yeah, the same here,” she said. “I enjoyed travelling with the Doctor very much, _and_ I learned a great deal about alien tech I’d never have dreamt of. But this… this is real. This is _home_ , and I’ve missed it.”

Their peaceful moment was rudely interrupted by Owen who looked in, his lovely face full of impatience and anxiety.

“Oi, Teaboy!” he growled. “Move your arse down to the cells! I want my dick back, and they’re about to start any time now.”

Ianto sighed and rose gracefully. “You’re such a prick, Owen, to begin with – I really don’t see why you’d need an extra one,” he said, but followed the pretty doctor obediently.

He _did_ want to get back the trademark Jones family jewels, too.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
An hour later everything was over. Ianto, Owen and Andy were back to the original, and even Myfanwy was a pterodactyl again, even though everyone agreed that she’d been a lot more useful – not to mention much cheaper to feed – as a rubbish-eating green octopus.

“I could take her back to her own time,” the Doctor offered, and after some hesitation Ianto agreed to let him do so. At least it spared them the concern that Baby Alice might be accidentally eaten by a hungry prehistoric reptile.

Speaking of which, the naming feast of Baby Alice was a fairly spectacular affair. They held it in Owen’s penthouse, as he alone of the entire team had a flat large enough for all the party guests. The guest list included the Doctor, Martha and Tish, Rhiannon and her family (including the kids), Archie McAllister and Detective Kathy Swanson, just because Jack liked her a lot. 

Ianto didn’t really mind. He was back in one of his impeccable suits again and felt supremely himself. Tosh looked like a princess from a fairly tale, and even Jack abandoned his military coat for the evening. He was devastatingly gorgeous in his tuxedo, Ianto decided with proprietary pride.

Baby Alice was admired from all sides, her beauty and good nature discussed in considerable length, and she was given way too many presents. It was decided that she’d wear Jones as her family name, since Jack officially didn’t even exist. Besides, it made look more natural for Rhiannon to raise her as her brother’s kid when they had the same surname.

Before the guests would depart, Jack stood and rapped the rim of his glass with a spoon.

“I want to make a toast,” he said. “To Gwen Cooper, without whose stupidity we couldn’t have our wonderful daughter now. May she have a long and happy life with Rhys – far, far away from here!”

The others laughed at the backhanded compliment but joined the toast nevertheless. Then came the time of goodbyes with the Doctor and Archie departing and Rhiannon taking the baby home with her.

“Are you sure this is what you want?” she asked her brother. “Aren’t you gonna miss her something fierce?”

“I already am,” Ianto replied, “but it’s for the best, Rhi. Our work doesn’t really agree with having a family.”

“Why having this baby in the first place, then?” Rhiannon asked. As Ianto gave no answer, she nodded grimly. “I see. There’s more behind this than just you and Jack wanting a child, right? Something you aren’t telling me. But why? I’m your sister, Ianto; I’d support you, no matter what.”

“I know,” Ianto replied, “but trust me, it’s better so. Perhaps one day I’ll be able to tell you the whole story… but not yet. Can you be patient for the time being?”

Rhiannon grinned. “I’m a Jones, _and_ I’m married to Johnnie Davies. What do you think?”

~The End~


End file.
